Like Alicia, I too am doing some thinking out loud and documenting my paper as I go. I am still in the brainstorming stage of the project. I actually wanted to run a question by all of you to get your input. For me, at first take, it seems like there are two options for the paper: either we argue for or against the effect that print had on our respective areas. I don't think it is limited to that though. What are some ideas that you all had? Reading Alicia's post helped me to get a grasp on some different ideas that I could look at.
I area of research is medicine. As I wrote about in my last post, print had a wonderfully positive on the world of medicine in terms of unification and development. However, in our group discussion on Thursday, the comment came up about what if a faulty procedure was published, thus resulting in the deaths of many people. That would definitely not be good! Thinking about that then it seems probable that the development of print also gave way to editing groups composed of experts who would allow something to be published or not. Those are just some preliminary thoughts.
My Dad is a researcher and surgeon so I sent him an email and asked him these three questions:
1, How has the ability to print and publish research findings had an impact on your career? What does it mean to you to be able to do that?
2. How does it affect the medical world as a whole to be able to publish and share research?
3. How would the medical field be different without the ability to publish and circulate your findings?
So, that is my progress so far!
I think that's a really interesting subject, Scott. Today it is probably mostly beneficial than it was in history to have findings published because there is a lot less malpractice. I think you would have better luck researching that the.printing press influenced medicine practice for good, though.
ReplyDeleteScott, I think you don't necessarily have to argue for or against the effect of print on your area; you could simply make an argument that it did have a certain effect. That could help narrow your topic (you could talk about something more specific than "good" or "bad"), and maybe you can use your dad's responses to help you key in on one specific effect of printing on medicine.
ReplyDeleteI think this topic is really relevant to the sharing and communicating of knowledge, and it sounds like you are going to be discussing the integration and communal sharing of arguable the most important knowledge: medicine. I think publishing and sharing medical research is of the utmost importance and yields many outcomes and implications relating back to the results of the ways of transmitting knowledge that we discuss in class
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alicia; I'm going to basically just claim that a change did occur with typography for my paper. But saying that it is a better or worse change would work too, if you can argue for one side.
ReplyDeleteAndrew's so right, medicine has heavily influenced how we as a society transmit knowledge. Imagine how many more people in the world would be sick and diseased if they did not know anything about healthy eating habits or proper food preparation or any of the research that is conducted by thousands of scientists a year.
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