HPS 1702 Junior/Senior Seminar for HPS Majors
HPS 1703 Writing Workshop for HPS Majors
Spring term 2018
Research Assignments and Writing Exercises
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Policy on Late Submission of Research Assignments. Late submission of these assignments is strongly discouraged. The assignments are cumulative and late submission leads to delaying new work and so falling further behind. If an extension is sought, it should only be for a few days. The need for the extension should be explained in writing and a date nominated in writing for the time of submission.
This seminar is intended to be a "capstone" experience for majors in history and philosophy of science. So far, each of you have taken an array of courses that specialize in one of other aspect of HPS. This seminar will give you direct experience of how someone in HPS synthesizes their history of science and their philosophy of science. This will be done through a series of research assignments that you will carry out in the course of the term. They will have historical and philosophical components and lead up a term paper in which the historical and philosophical parts are synthesized. The exercises for the writing workshop are folded into the series, as are exercises intended to ease you into professionalization in HPS. They include some insight into scholarly publishing and the practicalities of presenting your work in a poster.
See Schedule for deadlines.
Select some episode in history of science that interests
you and prepare a short, roughly 500 word description of it.
Submit through http://courseweb.pitt.edu.
For this and subsequent research assignments, please submit the paper in
text, Word or "rtf" (=rich text format) files, since I can easily edit
them. Please do not send pdf's since I cannot edit the files.
The plan is that your analysis of this episode will be developed in the course of term through the remaining assignments. So you should pick an episode that you think may have interesting philosophical aspects for you to explore in your term project. (Do not be too concerned at this stage if you cannot specify precisely what those philosophical aspects may be. Figuring that out will be part of your project during the term.)
Go small: For a small project like this to succeed, the episode
must be as small and narrow as you can make it. If the history extends
over hundreds of years, most likely it will only contain superficial
generalities, poorly grounded in evidence from your historical sources.
Be Specific: History of science recounts specific people doing specific things at definite times and places. "It was noticed that..." is a scientist's locution that suppresses exactly the who/what/when/where that is the basis of all history. When you look at your episode you should have no difficulty answering the "who/what/when/where?" question. That is, your narrative should be specific enough so that the reader is in no doubt of who is undertaking which specific actions (what), when they are doing it and where they are doing it.
Focus for HPS 1703 Writing Workshop.
(a) Good scholarly writing is simple, clear and direct; and it communicates well to the intended audience. Try to conform to these goals in the writing. Use short sentences, an active voice and simpler language wherever possible. Have some idea of who your reader is. Assume it is someone who works in history and philosophy of science but may not know your particular science or the historical example. The other students in the seminar fit this description.
(b) Good scholarly writing is spelled correctly, uses proper grammar and is laid out attractively on the page. Submissions not conforming to these standards will be returned for revision.
Wondering "how much can I copy and paste into my essay"? If you have to ask, you'd better look at my handout on the use of sources.
Here are some pitfalls that people writing in history of science should avoid.
Anachronism.
It is tempting to mix modern day judgments of the science with the historical narrative. While these judgments are certainly important, they must not be allowed to take over the narrative. Our goal is to understand an historical episode in its own terms--the goals, methods, thoughts, analyses, etc. of the people in question and how they implemented them. We are not aided in that by remarking that we now agree or disagree with the person. Indeed we are obstructed if that later judgment replaces the historical analysis we should have given. (See further remarks on this question under Assignment B below.)
Antiquarianism.
While the danger of anachronism is significant, efforts to avoid it can sometimes lead to the opposite problem. Our modern mechanics derives from Newton and not Descartes; our biology from Darwin and not Lamarck; our chemistry from Lavoisier and not Priestley. All is not of equal importance in history of science. In our zeal to avoid anachronism, we should not lose sight of these connections through time. It is now increasingly common for the fear of anachronism in writing in history of science to lead to narratives that are hermetically sealed from present interests. That sort of history of science risks the danger of irrelevance, that is, a history that gives us no reason to care about the work of Newton and Darwin.
The Default History.
A novice, but poor strategy for writing a term paper on some topic is to look up the definition of the term in the dictionary and make that the opening paragraph of the paper. It is poor because it is a mechanical, one-size-fits-all way to set up the paper. Only rarely is it appropriate. There is a corresponding strategy in writing history of science papers. The topic may be debates over the nature of combustion in the 18th century. Nonetheless, the paper starts out mechanically by reporting the earliest known human use of fire; then it traces ideas on fire through antiquity up to the 18th century. Unless there is a specific need for this sort of background, it should be avoided. It is quite legitimate to pick one episode and look just at that. Indeed, when you have only 500 words to write it is much better to do that. Otherwise you waste far too many words on bland generalization and do not have enough left to do justice to the real topic.
Citing Sources.
Historians of science don't just know things. They learn them from sources. It is fundamental in academic history that you tell your readers what your sources are. The principle is that a reader ought to be able to find and verify the source claimed for your major points. As a result, citing an entire book is inadequate. The reader should not be expected to read an entire book to find the material you used. You should say where in the book the material is found. That is usually done with page numbers. This general notion guides most citation conventions. You give enough information on a source so that the reader can find exactly what you read. Hence author and title are not enough. The publisher and edition should also be given. If you and the reader consult different editions, the pagination and text may be different. There is a danger at the opposite extreme. In practice you cannot cite everything, lest your text become a cluttered mess. So you have to decide what in your text can be taken as common knowledge and needs no citation. e.g. you could take it as common knowledge that Darwin wrote Origin of Species and traveled on the Beagle and so these claims need not be footnoted, but a particular quote from him would need a citation.
Philosophical focus. Narrowness of episode for this assignment.
You need to keep in mind how this assignment is to be developed. It will eventually be connected with some issue in philosophy of science. As a result, the episode must have philosophical or conceptual considerations playing some prominent role. Entire theories or sciences will raise numerous philosophical questions, whereas you need only one for your project. So keep your work simple and choose as narrow an episode as you can. Otherwise you will become overwhelmed by the volume of material and be able to say little beyond banalities. The analysis of one single experiment could well supply enough material, for example.
Expand your earlier short history into a longer case
study of roughly 1500 words. While no explicit philosophical analysis is
to be given yet, be sure that some philosophical or conceptual issue is
lurking in your case study, so that it can be developed in the remaining
assignments. Your account must incorporate material from at least one
primary source.
Submit through http://courseweb.pitt.edu.
If this assignment is to be successfully developed by the remaining philosophical assignments, it will need some quite definite material of philosophical or conceptual interest. That material is likely to be most apparent if you keep your focus on as narrow a topic as you can. (See remarks above under Assignment A.)
Added February 9, 2017: "Why": After reading your responses to Assignment A, it will be helpful if I recall here that focusing on who/what/when/where is only the start. Once you have that answered, you are ready to consider the "why" of it all. You have chosen to report certain events because you find them important in some aspect. That means that they connect with other events in ways that you want to emphasize. The principal content of your narrative will then be the displaying of those connections. That gives the reader an understanding of events.
For example, in November 1915, Einstein communicated to the Prussian Academy of Science four versions of his final general theory of relativity, one each week, on November 4, 11, 18 and 25. So far all we have is a set of four who/what/when/where statements. Now comes the "why"? Why is Einstein suddenly flooding the Academy with reports, delivered so hastily that at least two of them need to be partially retracted the following week? This is quite uncharacteristic of Einstein's publication practices. Pursuing that why question takes us to see that Einstein had been tormented over the preceding three years by his publication in 1913 of an erroneous version of the theory. By November 1915, he had finally found how it erred. He was too eager to set the record straight, so he published prematurely in the first communication, triggering the need for a cascade of further communications correcting errors in the preceding ones.
Focus for HPS 1703 Writing Workshop.
Added February 9, 2017. Cite sources informatively. After reading your responses to Assignment A, some further guidance on using citations will be helpful. Remember the point of giving a citation is to reassure the reader that you have a good foundation for making some claim. The citation should be given in sufficient detail so that the reader can find it quickly and check that it does provide the support you say it does.
There's the critical piece: you have to say what support the citation provides! That is, you have to say what the reader should expect to find in the place cited. It is, unfortunately, quite common for citations in the literature not to do this. That it is common does not make it a good scholarly practice. Here's an example. The text says:
"Although the idea now seems implausible, many scientists of that era believed X. (Smith, p.21)"
The reader is told that the claim somehow gets support from what is on p.21 of the Smith reference. But citing it this way leaves quite open what that support is.
Will the reader find affirmation that X is implausible?
Will the reader find an example of a scientist of that era who believed X?
Will the reader find a survey by some historian showing that scientists of
this era believed X?
The reader should not have to guess. You have to tell the reader what is in the source. For example, a better sentence would read:
"As Smith's (p.21) survey of biographies of scientists of the time showed, although the idea now seems implausible, many scientists of that era believed X."
Context.
The essence of good historical writing is sensitivity to context and the goal in this piece of writing is to locate the episode in its proper context. The danger in writing an historical episode is that we allow what we now know to overshadow what actually happened. For example, we now know that Einstein's special theory of relativity can be presented in terms of two principles and some clever thought experiments on light signals and clocks. That his original 1905 paper was full of electrodynamics is a matter often left for another day. While this attitude might be acceptable if our goal is to understand the theory in its own right, it is an anachronistic trap if our goal is to understand how special relativity emerged historically. It came from Einstein's resolute pursuit of problems in electrodynamics. Understanding those problems and Einstein's struggles with them is how we understand the discovery of the theory. (For my contribution to this literature, see this synopsis.)
A common mistake made especially by scientists is to assume that they somehow know the history of a theory merely because they understand the theory itself. Another is to rely uncritically on the history provided in a science text book. (See below.)
Sources.
Historical narratives must be grounded in the evidence of historical sources and the better the source, the better the account. For this reason, historians put a premium on histories that draw directly on primary sources."Primary sources" are those written by the principal figures and are generally deemed more reliable the closer they are written in time to the events in question. Primary sources include scientific papers and books as well as archival materials, such as manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence. "Secondary sources" are written by others and recount the episode in question. They are an essential part of the history of science and for many purposes quite sufficient. Breaking new ground in history of science, however, requires analysis of primary sources.
Here are some further pitfalls that people writing in history of science should avoid.
Textbook histories.
It is common in science textbooks to include sections, often introductory, on the historical background of the science. This is to be applauded; understanding the historical origins of the science can add greatly to the appreciation of the science. Sometimes this history is very well done. On other occasions, it is not. The textbook may smooth out the roughness in what really happened in order to tell a more streamlined and compelling story pedagogically. Then the history can be reduced to a quite misleading caricature of the what really happened.
A famous example is the history of special relativity. In the older textbook tradition, the origins of the theory were routinely attributed to Einstein pondering the Michelson-Morley experiment. We soon learned, however, that this experiment had only a very indirect role in Einstein's discovery and that Einstein barely recalled if he even knew of the experiment at the time he discovered the theory. Two factors seem to have promoted this myth in the textbooks. One is that it is pedagogically easy to proceed from the experiment to a development of the theory. If only the theory had been discovered that way, the historical path would have been a great way to teach the theory! The other is that it fitted with the popular idea of a close link between theory and experiment. Special relativity was the theory and the Michelson-Morley experiment was the experiment that found expression in it.
The Passive Voice.
This possibility of science textbook histories running astray is widely recognized. There is another, more subtle problem that is not so widely recognized. In both textbooks and research articles, scientists are encouraged to write in a passive anonymous voice. The fiction is of a kind of disembodied scientific consciousness that is the repository of scientific knowledge: "It was known that..." New discoveries are stripped as much as possible of human form and motivation: "It was observed that..." This locution suppresses the human beings who made the discoveries, where and when they were done, the reasons they thought to observe where they did, their passions and aversions, the rivalries and feuds and the many dead ends. Writing in this style makes it very hard to pay proper attention to context.
Prepare a short (500 word) discussion of a problem in the
philosophy of science that is relevant to your historical case study. You
should identify a definite thesis and an argument that supports it. Then
supply some evaluation of the thesis and supporting argument. e.g. is the
thesis properly supported by the argument?
Submit through http://courseweb.pitt.edu.
If you have been circumspect in choosing the historical episode in Assignments A and B, you should now have little trouble identifying a suitable philosophical problem. If you are having trouble delineating the problem, review the major topics in philosophy of science: induction, evidence and confirmation; explanation; causation; realism and antirealism; theory and experiment; models, approximations and idealizations; the nature of change in science; and so on. There must be something in these of relevance!
Focus for HPS 1703 Writing Workshop.
The essence of good philosophical writing is attention to thesis and argument. In this regard professional philosophy is quite distinct from the popular view of philosophy as a collection of clever but obscure remarks that no one really understands and the sad lament that we are surrounded by mysteries transcending our humble grasp. Save this for cocktail parties. Professional philosophers seek to state their claims--their theses--in as simple and clear a language as possible and then to establish them with cogent argumentation. This is your goal.
In the popular view, establishing something by argumentation is sometime taken to mean that it is established by colorful language or even rhetorical subterfuge. That is not what is intended here. A prerequisite for this seminar is a class in logic. The informal arguments you studied there are the sort intended here.
Here are two examples of a thesis and supporting argument. Both are given in a very condensed form, but they should be sufficient to indicate the style of analysis I am encouraging.
Thesis: No inductive
argument scheme can be justified. ("Hume's problem," modernized)
Argument: A justification for an inductive argument scheme will
either be deductive or inductive. A deductive justification would
contradict the inductive character of the inductive argument. An inductive
justification requires use of the either very inductive inference scheme
under consideration, which is circular; or calling in another inductive
inference scheme, which triggers an infinite regress.
Thesis: ("Grue") Inductive
inference is powerless to support useful inferences; any inductive
inference scheme that allows us to infer from the observation of green
emeralds to the greenness of unobserved emeralds must also allow us to
infer equally that they are any other color.
Argument:
1. Assume that we have an inductive inference scheme that assures us that
observation of green emeralds supports the hypothesis that unobserved
emeralds are green.
2. Because of the symmetry of green and grue (under the standard
definition of grue), the same inductive inference scheme must assure us
that observation of grue emeralds supports equally the hypothesis that
unobserved emeralds are grue.
3. Redescribing 2., we have that the inductive inference scheme must
assure us that observation of green emeralds supports the hypothesis that
unobserved emeralds are blue.
4. Thus the same observation of green emeralds, supports equally the
hypothesis that unobserved emeralds are green and that they are blue (and,
by duplication of the argument, any other color we care to name).
Give a short statement (250 words) of how you plan to
combine the discussion of a problem in philosophy of science from
Assignment C with the historical case study of Assignment B.
Submit through http://courseweb.pitt.edu.
It is likely that by now you have a good sense of how your will combine
these two discussions. It is still worth sketching your plan. There is
something about writing down ideas that forces you to think more clearly
about them.
Exactly how this combination is to be done is up to you--that's the
creative part in HPS! There are some obvious models to follow.
Let us say that your interest is in how scientists brought evidence to bear on some hypothesis or theory. So...
• Does your case study provide an illustrative example of the use of a
particular form of inductive inference?
• Does the case study demonstrate the untenability of some particular
account of induction?
• There are well-known meta-level claims about induction: Hume's problem
of induction, "grue," the underdetermination thesis. How does your case
study bear on these meta-claims?
• Does your case study manifest an approach to inductive inference that
does not fit well with any of the standard accounts we reviewed? Can you
learn a new approach to induction from it?
Whatever the topic may be, a sensible place to start is this question: Is there something in the case study that does not sit well with the received view of induction, evidence, explanation, causation and so on that you have seen in the philosophical literature?
Combine your historical case study with your
philosophical analysis to produce a draft paper not to exceed 9,500 words.
Your analysis should establish a definite thesis in philosophy of science
that is grounded in your historical case study. The paper should conform
to the style sheet of the journal Philosophy of Science, as described
below.
Submit through http://courseweb.pitt.edu.
Focus for HPS 1703 Writing Workshop.
Part of preparing a manuscript in HPS is the appropriate formatting of the document and, most especially, the use of a consistent system of referencing your sources. The system used and the general layout of the document will generally be specified by the vehicle through which you will publish. Every journal has a house style and will ask you to submit manuscripts to it using that house style.
In order to gain experience in the consistent use of a particular system, please conform your term paper to the house style of the journal Philosophy of Science. Their style sheet is available at http://journal.philsci.org/submissions and http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/phos/instruct#formatting. I do expect your paper to conform to the requirement on the sheet that: "The manuscript should include an abstract of approximately 100 words. A paper may not exceed 9,500 words, including abstract, footnotes, and references." (Please include a word count in your manuscript for my reference.)
Your manuscript should not be prepared for anonymous review. Ignore this part of the instructions. Do include your name. (More generally, I find the guidelines for preparation for anonymous review to be harmful to good writing. They encourage you to eliminate the bright and strong "I have argued elsewhere..." in favor of a duller "As Jones (2001) has argued...")
You should conform your paper to all their guidelines, including layout, margins, type and, most especially, the system for citing your sources and preparing a list of references. You should ignore obviously inappropriate requirements. (e.g. Do not send the paper to Philosophy of Science! I will not expect transfer of copyright.) Since the sheet mentions LaTeX, let me add that I cannot easily read papers sent to me in LaTeX, so please don't.
To get a sense of what is wanted by the style sheet, it is very helpful
to look at sample issues of Philosophy of Science. If you do not have a
recent article from Philosophy of Science at hand, you can look at it in
the library, either on paper or through the library's digital library. If
you are accessing the internet outside Pitt's network, the journal offers
a free sample issue online at http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/phos/current
Go to menu: "Browse Issues --> Online Sample Issue"
You will be paired up with another student and each will
be the other's editor. Your function as editor will be (i) to assist the
author in perfecting the content of the paper and (ii) to assist the
author in conforming the paper to the journal style sheet. You must return
editorial comments to your author within seven days of receipt of the
first draft.
You will make arrangements to swap papers with your editor in the class
meeting of April 4. For the random pairing of students, see "Who
Edits Whom?"
I am assigning 1/10th of the term paper grade to your editing (i.e. 3.5% of 35% in HPS 1702 and 6% of 60% in HPS 1703). You will get the full 1/10th credit as long as the student whose paper you edit inserts a sentence on the first page saying "This paper edited by [your name here]. Date first draft sent to editor: [date here]. Date editorial comments received from editor: [date here]." A priority in your editing, then, will be to assure that this sentence is added in the paper you edit! To get full credit, the two dates must show that the editor's comments were sent within seven days of the editor's receipt of the draft.
Focus for HPS 1703 Writing Workshop.
(i) It is important to get feedback from others whenever you undertake scholarly work. This routinely happens informally when we circulate manuscripts among friends. And it happens more formally when an editor, usually with the support of anonymous referee reports, asks for various changes to the content of a paper. Typically acceptance of the paper for publication depends upon completion of the changes to the editor's satisfaction.
(ii) Most documents need to be edited to weed out obvious typogr&*^aphical errors ("typos") and some that are harder too see. The traditional way of doing this is for an editor to work through the paper, pencil in hand, marking the text and putting explanations in the margins. (That is why style sheets want text double spaced with generous margins. It leaves rooms for these editorial marks.) The editing and printing industry has long used a standard set of marks that you should know about, since they are nearly universally used and understood. This is the system an author is asked to use, for example, when "proof pages"--the first attempt at the final published text--are sent to an author by the printer for approval. You are asked to indicate necessary changes using this system.
You will find the marks described in (big file!) US Government Printing Office Style Manual. Washington, 2008, Ch.1 See paragraph 1.22 on p.4-5 for a table of commonly used marks and a sample copy edited page illustrating how they are used. (Direct link to the table and illustration here.) Some marks are used in the margin and others in the text. You'll get a sense of the system most quickly by comparing the sample page with the table.
If you edit paper copies of each other's work, you might find it convenient to use this system. Times in publishing are changing and this system is ill-adapted to the editing of electronic documents. I have seen systems of electronic proofreader's marks devised, but I'm not sure if any are standard. Major word processing programs and pdf readers also provide the capacity for a reader to insert editorial remarks in the text. It will be interesting to see whether a new electronic standard for proofreader's marks emerges.
Submit a final version of the paper whose content
conforms to the material requested in E. and whose style conforms to the
Philosophy of Science style sheet.
Submit through http://courseweb.pitt.edu.
While is it almost impossible to ensure that every comma is exactly as required in the style sheet, I will reduce the paper's grade for significant deviations from the style sheet. Learning the discipline of a style sheet is part of learning to be a scholar.
On April 18 you will present your research project to faculty and graduate students of the Department of HPS and Fellows of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the HPS Undergraduate Majors Poster Forum. It will be held in the Center for Philosophy of Science, 817CL.
You will prepare your posters through two presentations
in class: a content sketch and draft poster presentation.
What is a poster presentation?
Traditionally, conferences involve speakers standing before an audience, working through the content of a talk. This vehicle gives the speaker full control of an audience that is expected to sit quietly and listen, reserving questions for a brief period at the end of the talk.
A poster forum replaces this one-way communication with a conversation. A presenter prepares a poster of modest size, usually on stiff a board. The posters are displayed in an area set aside at the conference. The presenter stands with the poster and conference participants drift past, pausing to talk with the presenter if the poster piques their interest. The resulting conversations may be as short as a minute or much longer, if there is serious engagement.
What Does a Poster Forum Look Like? Look here to see.
What Makes a Good Poster?
Three Big Ideas:
1. A poster is an invitation to discussion. (more below)
The goal is not to give an impromptu talk. It is to engage in conversation about your project. It is an enticement for your interlocutor to follow your written work later.
2. The content of a good poster is highly structured. (more below)
The poster presents a few major points only. They are structured hierarchically: one main point and several subsidiary, supporting points.
3. A good poster is graphically appealing. (more below)
Then passers by will pause to look and find it easy to follow your content.
Starting in 2016, the Philosophy of Science Association has included
poster sessions in its major, biennial conference. Here are the Instructions
and Tips. and Examples
for the PSA2018 Poster Forum.
On March 21 and March 28, you will take turns presenting to the class a sketch of the ideas that will be in your poster.
Presentation time: 15 minutes.
The emphasis is on the content. You will worry about the graphic design later.
Bring a file to project on a USB chip. Suitable formats are Powerpoint, pdf and Word.
For this exercise, you will work just on what content you will include in the poster. The graphical design will come later.
For the poster to work as a poster, the content cannot be a fully self-contained narrative like a paper. Rather it consists of a series of points, presented briefly in strong headings with a little supporting text and possibly images. The points + texts + images are really lures to induce your interlocutor to ask questions. They functions as prompts to you for the longer explanations you will give verbally.
The points must have a strong hierachical structure. At the top level, there is one big point that is the main idea of the poster. It is supported by a second level of subsidiary ideas. These ideas are sufficiently well-delineated that they could each be subjects of discussion independently.
This poster has a nice hierarchy.
Your ultimate goal is a sparse collection of words that can fit into the poster. At this stage, you can afford to have more words. In the next stage you will reduce your words to the barest minimum.
On April 4 and April 11, you will take turns presenting to the class your best attempt at incorporating your sketched content into a graphically well-designed poster.
Presentation time: 15 minutes.
To simulate the experience of presenting the poster in the forum, another student will play the role of your interlocutor. Your interlocutor will be the same student selected to edit your draft paper.
Bring a file to project on a USB chip. Suitable formats are Powerpoint and pdf.
A graphically well-designed poster
A well-designed poster:
• Looks graphically good from both near and far.
• Projects the biggest idea of the poster to someone at a distance and
draws them in.
• Makes is easy for that person to explore the content once they have
approached.
Easy to avoid errors
The text of the poster should be printed in large enough letters so that it can easily be read by someone standing nearby, without having to lean in. If you need to use small letters, then you have too many words. Use fewer words until your letters are big enough to be read easily. Don't do this. No one is going to read all this text.
Do use carefully chosen graphical images to enliven the poster. Done well, the images should themselves be part of the content. Images included merely as decoration, however, are a lost opportunity. They will catch the eye of passers-by. But they will communicate nothing. Don't do this. The graphics are pleasing and perhaps even professionally designed. But they have no role in conveying any of the content of the poster.
Good design
A
well-designed poster is inviting
and makes viewing and reading it
effortless and pleasurable.
A poorly-designed poster can have the same content, but it repels its viewers and makes reading it unpleasant.
Preparing a good design is a skill that some of us have naturally and others have to work hard to achieve. Here are some ideas to help.
Some useful design sites:
https://crayolateachers.ca/classroom-posters/
https://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/building_lessons/principles_design.pdf
https://colinpurrington.com/2012/02/example-of-bad-scientific-poster/
Preparing you computer file
You should use whatever software you find comfortable for preparing a large poster. Presentation software such as, Powerpoint, Apple's equivalent Keynote or the open source Impress, is commonly used. If you are unfamiliar with graphical software, they are good choices. They allow you to place text and graphics freely on the page. They also make it easy for you to include graphical elements like colored boxes, arrows and images.
Ordinary word processing software like Word is a poorer choice, since word processors are optimized for ordinary page layouts.
If you have graphical expertise, fancier programs like Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer or the open source Inkscape will provide you considerably more flexibility. However if you are unfamiliar with the software, it takes some effort to learn how to use it.
Whatever software you use to prepare the poster, the final file that you will print at the UPS Store must be saved as a pdf, png of tiff.
Templates
The internet provides numerous templates into which you can enter your
content. The PSA
2018 Guidelines link to some of them. The templates I saw on the
internet were almost always mediocre. They would bring you to a finished
product quickly. But the cost would be a mediocre result with a
cookie-cutter, "one size fits all" feel to it. Use them if you really
must, but avoid them if you can.
Printing your poster
The cost of printing one poster of size 36" x 48" at the UPS Store at 3945 Forbes Ave. will be covered. You should use this service only after your draft poster has been reviewed in class. The UPS store requires at least 3 days to print your poster, so plan ahead.
Detailed
instructions on printing your poster.
Present your poster to faculty and graduate students of
the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Fellows of the
Center for Philosophy of Science at the Undergraduate Majors' Poster
Forum, Center for Philosophy of Science, 817 CL. April 18, 2018,
1:00-3:25pm.
This is the big event. You will set up, display your poster and wait for participants in the forum to visit.
How to present your poster
Your goal is to engage in conversation with interlocutors. It is not to give a presentation such as you would if offering a talk at a conference.
As a model for how to engage, think about what you do when you are talking with friends. You avoid long monologues. You make a few remarks and wait for them to respond. You make strong eye contact and watch for cues in body language that your friend wants to say something. You keep the conversation going by reacting and responding to what they say. A real conversation is a genuine exchange of ideas. You each both say things and listen.
The following will help you keep the conversation going:
• Be ready with shorter and longer explanations. The shortest might run for just 20-30 seconds. A longer one may run for a few minutes.
• Keep your remarks brief and try to focus on what attracted your interlocutor.
• Ask questions of the interlocutor. "Is that clear?" "Would you like to hear more about X or Y?"
• Pause frequently to give your interlocutor a chance to say something.
• Don't be afraid of silence, especially if it gives your interlocutor a chance to look at your poster and read its content.
• Watch your interlocutors' body language. If your speech goes on for too long, they will start to lose interest. They may interrupt; or they will fidget or look away. When that happens, stop talking!
John D. Norton, Spring 2018
