{"id":1013,"date":"2020-02-07T22:01:47","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T22:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2020-02-07T22:02:26","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T22:02:26","slug":"curation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2020\/02\/07\/curation\/","title":{"rendered":"Curation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/ljmgreen.com\/2019\/09\/08\/research-scholarship-and-curating\/\">a recent blog post<\/a>, Les Green draws a distinction between <em>research<\/em> and <em>scholarship<\/em>. The former he characterizes as &#8220;[finding] out something [you] didn&#8217;t know, but which was there to be known&#8221;; the latter involves keeping up with the literature and making novel arguments. He distinguishes both of those from another thing philosophers do which he calls <em>curating<\/em>. He characterizes it this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>A curator attempts to care for knowledge and culture we already have. Not by freezing it or ensuring no others can touch it, but by conserving it while placing it in a new context, or displaying it from a new angle, or in the company of new ideas, so as to make it intelligible and perhaps useful to those who follow us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This captures an important feature of philosophy which is absent from (e.g) physics.<span id='easy-footnote-1-1013' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2020\/02\/07\/curation\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1013' title=' I mean the idea of curating. I&amp;#8217;m not convinced that the research\/scholarship distinction is especially helpful.'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>I have students read primary texts. It wouldn&#8217;t do to substitute a secondary source which recounts what the primary text says, because I don&#8217;t expect students to come away with the same interpretation. Instead, I assign texts which I think are worth engaging with. I often have some specific point in mind when I include a text on the syllabus, but I think that there are indefinitely many take-aways which would make the reading worth students&#8217; time. My task is to help students find some meaning in this text and learn how to find meanings in texts like it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The analogy with curating is apt, but I wish there were a better word. &#8220;Curating&#8221; lacks gravitas. It already has a use in internet culture which, near as I can tell, just means linking to things you like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/5\/5d\/Social_Content_Curation.svg\/240px-Social_Content_Curation.svg.png\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Social_Content_Curation.svg\">Wikimedia<\/a>, a Noun Project icon for something-something curation.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent blog post, Les Green draws a distinction between research and scholarship. The former he characterizes as &#8220;[finding] out something [you] didn&#8217;t know, but which was there to be known&#8221;; the latter involves keeping up with the literature and making novel arguments. He distinguishes both of those from another thing philosophers do which &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2020\/02\/07\/curation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Curation&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s7PjAo-curation","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}