Barebones Goes To University

I got this nice mail from Mary Edwards in Florida, USA. It goes like this:

Hi

My name is Mary Edwards and I’m a doctoral student at the University of Florida studying educational technology.  My cohort of doctoral students is creating resources pages using google groups and I’m designing a page about phenomenology and the phenomenological approach to research. 

I really like your venn representation of phenomenology and request permission to add it to my page (image attached as a bitmap for your reference).  Our google group site is limited to Ed Tech doc students and requires an administratively distributed password.  

Thanks for your consideration. 

Mary 

Mary Edwards, MLIS
Distance Learning Librarian and Liaison
Health Science Center Libraries
University of Florida

Below is the Barebones’ Venn Diagram. It carries another name there, as you can see, but it is still a Venn diagram. It has now gone to the University of Florida, but I will continue using it here. Just to let you know.

Handmade it is, even. 

Basic Barebones Communication Diagram. Copyright 2008/2009 Knut Skjærven.

The mail from Mary Edwards is published with her permission.

The Other Way Around

A strange thing has happened during the unfolding of this blog. When I started, I always had a text, or an idea for a text, and searched for a picture. Now, I often have a picture and search for a text. Things have turned upside down. I just noticed.

Just to let you know. And yes, you have seen this picture before.

Copyright 2008: Knut Skjærven.

barebones goes presidential with german cowboy

Well, why not ?

Barebones goes presidential with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Found on a site of a German Cowboy. 

 

Things are picking up. Call this a presidential brand positioning of barebones. Freely handed over by a netfellow

Thanks to all of you for picking up this blog, and a happy election to the two of you.

By the way, do you notice that candidates actually do the proximity dance in the picture? 

For more on proximity dance, please go here.

Cheers  

barebones on medicine

Barebones communication is on medicine. Its own medicine.

It was the original idea, that this was going to be a bilingual blog, but that is not going to work. Not 80 percent in English, and the rest in Danish. It would put off those who don’t speak Danish, I am afraid.

So the blog will stay in English. 

I am not going to make any rocket science out of this, but communication is ALSO the ability to take the other man’s position. So, I simply asked myself what my answer would be if someone asked me for advice on an bilingual blog. The barebones answer would be: Forget It.

And so I forgot it . 

 

 

Boxxet is just amazing, no?

Well, I am not going to bother you with this much longer, but I find it amazing. barebones communication is now shadowed by Boxxet, it seems. Small thing I know, but at least A Thing.

 

Follow the link or take a look below. Sorry that I am enthusiastic about it .

 

By the way, here is Boxxet.

 

 

 

 

Steuart Henderson Britt has Passed Away.

And while we are at it; I managed to track down Britt the last day of the last year.

I talk about Steuart Henderson Britt, who wrote Psychological Principles of Marketing and Consumer Behavior, Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachusetts, USA (Library Thing). And one of my all times favorites in terms of content and systematics in this area. In his book he even has a good chapter on gestalt psychology, which is pretty rare.

Why did I want to track him down? To have his permission to quote from his book on this blog. Remember that I told you, that barebones stands on 4 legs? One of these legs are the naturalistic inspiration within the human sciences. Britt is the reference I will use – for the most part anyway. 

Only thing with this book is that the title is a bit misleading. The title explicitly is to narrow, in my humble opinion.  This is a base book on communication in general, and well worth using here.

So, I started writing to the publisher in Massachusetts. The answer came promptly:

Dear Mr. Skjaerven,

Lexington no longer controls the rights to this book.  You may want to contact Northwestern University which has an archive of the author’s work.  Here is the information from the website”.

Then I wrote to Northwestern University, and I had a very friendly chat with Kevin B. Leonard. I couple of emails into the correspondence, I wrote:

Dear Kevin B. Leonard

Thanks you for your answer.

No, I don’t think that is any risk involved here. I don’t see what risk that could be other than revitalizing the book and the great work Henderson Britt has done. I’ll be more than happy to refer to NUL with every quote. 

BTW, its ironical that I end up talking to you .  In the late seventies I bought a copy of all the books you had in your series: Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. These books,in fact, will be one of the main inspirations for dealing with communication on my blog. Interesting how things can turn out.

Best wishes

Knut Skjærven  

 Kevin B. Leonard answered:

Dear Knut,

Thanks for your message.  Good luck with your blog.  Please don’t feel you must refer to NUL (ed. Northwestern University Library).  I do hope you will feel free to refer to Britt and the fact that his papers are here at Northwestern.  We’re always happy to deal with interested patrons … (ed: continued).

Best wishes,Kevin 

Unfortunately, Steuart Henderson Britt passed away in 1979, and Northwestern University Archieves, that hold his papers in their archives are in no position to tell me who has the copyright at present. They simply don’t know. Steuart Henderson Britt had no children, and his wife has presumably passed away as well.

Quotations from the book in question, will be made by fair use and respect for the limitations given below:

Copyright, Terms and Conditions, Citations

Return to patron information

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

Northwestern University Archives provides access to its holdings for educational and research purposes. The written permission of the copyright holders and/or other rights holders (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions. It is the responsibility of the researcher to secure such permission from the copyright holders. For original materials (including photographs) whose copyright is held by the Northwestern University Archives, permission should be obtained from Patrick M. Quinn, University Archivist. In many cases, the University Archives does not hold that copyright.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE OF ARCHIVAL MATERIALS

1. The user assumes all responsibility for infringement of copyright. (See statement below.)

2. Permission for use of archival photographs is granted for one-time use only; photographs may not be reused, republished, or conveyed to any other party without permission from the Northwestern University Archives.

3. Photographs used in publications must carry the credit line:

“COURTESY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES”

CITATION FORMAT

[date and title of document], [Series Title], Northwestern University Archives, Evanston, Illinois

 

 

kurz, doch vielsagend

Those of you that have already investigated gestalt psychology will know that the notion Prägnanz is important. 

Why then have I not used it?. Simply because it is a bit difficult to know what the word means within the gestalt psychology tradition. Some English translators say that the word cannot be translated into English. Others state, that the English word for it is pregnant. 

Well, none of them are wholly wrong. 

Even within the German language there seems to be some problems with this word. The big “Etymologisches Wörterbuch“ by Friedrich Kluge at Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1975 Edition, does not mention it. However, it mentions the adjective prägnant, which in their definition means “kurz, doch vielsagend”. And they add: ”  17. Jh. frz. prégnant zu lat. preagnans “schwanger”.

To add to the confusion is not unusual to find some gestalt theorists stating that there is a factor or a law of prägnanz, just as we e.g have a factor of proximity, a factor of similarity and factor of closure.  

Not so in this context.

I would rather see prägnant used about the general capacity, that makes the gestalt factors, in their various forms, possible. And as some gestaltists would say; this a capacity in the object, not in the subject.

I will use the word as an alias for outstanding, distinct, explicit, and with that little trick I have moved from and urge for a descriptive definition to that of a normative definition, which makes the world much easier for all of us.

I just wanted to bare the bones in this, somewhat, confusing matter.

Maybe this was not very kurz, but hopefully it was vielsagend enough. If not, I must try again . 

 

Should I be flattered?

Yesterday, I was playing around searching on google.

I came up with a number of hits searching “connotation” . I starting reading some of them. One hit from a site on museums was very interesting. It seems that I recognized some of the wording. It sounded very familiar. 

I had to go back to my post on denotation and connotation on this blog, and found that the text was a copy/paste of that text. Some letters were gone from the original, and the two pictures had gone as well.

Here is the original text from this blog. 

I don´t know about this. Should I be flattered, or not? It was a deliberate rearrangement without any reference or link.

Well, I decided to go with the former . 

Comments are welcome. 

Library Thing

By the way, as this blog grows, I will add all books that are referred to in Library Thing.  If you want to have a look at references in one go, then you are welcome to go here.

Well, come to think of it, I might actually add more books than those I refer to on the blog . 

barebones themes

As I have suggested elsewhere, this blog will be built up of themes. 

New themes may be added along the way, but the themes so far, are: 

main themes:

gestalt psychology, tagged as gestalt psychology

gestalt factors, tagged as gestalt factor 

semiology or semiotics, tagged as semiology and/or semiotics

hermeneutics and phenomenology, tagged as hermeneutics and/or phenomenology

naturalistic human sciences, tagged as naturalism (not yet in operation)

barebones notebook, tagged as notebook

barebones toolbox, tagged as toolbox 

minor themes: 

miscellaneous, posts that do not belong to any other theme, mostly of informative character

picture, all posts that contains pictures in them 

barebones pitstop, posts that mainly are famous or non-famous quotations, that may add to the picture, and give inspiration for further reading. These pitstops will be posted without any further comments from me, which means that you yourself have to elaborate on them, and make them meaningful. Pitstops will be tagged as pitstop. (Not yet in operation).

multiple tagging: 

Posts will normally not have one tag only, but more tags. This is to make sure that, even if you don’t follow this tight tag structure when searching for themes, but a more intuitive method, you will most likely get to your destination anyway.

Good luck with it. 

———————–

This post has also been posted as a page. I need to do some retagging in former posts, but that will be done in a couple of days time. Best way to navigate this blog is through the tag cloud.