Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 394.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2025-03-09 23:01:59+00:00
        From: Philip Mead <philip.mead@uwa.edu.au>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.386: bricks in a wall?

Interesting and heartening to see your comments here Willard. In recent years
I’ve been working with colleagues in Education, about issues to do with
knowledge in the classroom. ‘Bringing knowledge back in’ was one of the catch-
cries of an English sociological educationalist who said things that the
conservatives wanted to hear ….

In our responses to this, I insisted that we should signal that we thought about
knowledge differently, very much in the ways you suggest. So we called our book,
that came out of all this, Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers
(https://www.routledge.com/Literary-Knowing-and-the-Making-of-English-Teachers-
The-Role-of-Literature-in-Shaping-English-Teachers-Professional-Knowledge-and-
Identities/McLeanDavies-Doecke-Mead-Sawyer-
Yates/p/book/9780367618681?source=shoppingads&locale=en-
AUD&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=P7986470147_ECOMMC_cross-netwo
rk&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAACwvVoqe34O1ZHnvkeiFdKxzChXtV&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIovnx
jYz-iwMVA6tmAh1CBh9nEAQYASABEgJUlPD_BwE)

So, also an attempt to counter the tendency to treat knowledge as a thing!

Very best, and hope you’re well.

Philip

______________________________________________
Philip Mead PhD, FAHA

Emeritus Professor, Senior Honorary Research Fellow
English & Literary Studies M204
The University of Western Australia • WA 6009 Australia
t +61 (0417) 125 299<tel:+61417125299> •
philip.mead@uwa.edu.au
w: https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/persons/philip-mead

Honorary Professorial Fellow
Faculty of Education
The University of Melbourne
100 Leicester Street • VIC 3010 Australia
philip.mead@unimelb.edu.au


From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Date: Wednesday, 5 March 2025 at 5:07 pm
To: Philip Mead <philip.mead@uwa.edu.au>
Subject: [Humanist] 38.386: bricks in a wall?

              Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 386.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2025-03-05 06:01:11+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: 'knowledge'

For some time now  the noun 'knowledge' has bothered me for the
suggestion of its 'thingness' (OED s.v.: "The fact or character of being
a thing", a word that occurs as early as 1840). It suggests to me the
cognitive equivalent of a brick, as if units of 'knowledge' made a wall.
To what extent, I wonder, does the smart machine undo its permanence?
Yesterday I heard this sentence: "In its absence I know what freedom
is." -- 'know' because not lived, distant, remembered, imagined? When
engaged in research, especially now, with an inexhaustible quantity of
scholarship at our fingertips, wouldn't 'coming to know' be closer to
the condition of knowing we're in?

Comments welcome.

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk<http://www.mccarty.org.uk>



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