3 Things I Learned in Grad School ~ Feb 5 2017

I learned about Validity, Serious Leisure, and Umwelt. And, here's a Red Panda.

Validity
Apparently, as a scientist, I need strive for Validity. Boring. But, it makes sense, so here are the several types of Validity I learned about:

• Validity: a measure that accurately reflects the concept it is intended to measure
• Face Validity: the quality of an indicator that makes it seem a reasonable measure of some variable
• Criterion-related (or, Predictive) Validity: the degree to which a measure relates to some external criteria
• Construct Validity: the degree to which a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships
• Content Validity: the degree to which a measure covers the range of meanings included within a concept

 
 
Kaplan’s Leisure and Serious Leisure
My department is considered to be under Leisure. I’m not sure I agree with that but the conversations of how this is – and the justifications of why it is so – are interesting. Actually, I knew nothing of what Leisure was before this (and anyone that knows me would find it highly ironic that I am studying Leisure, being one of the least ‘leisurely’ people that I know at least). Along these lines though I’ve come across a workable definition of leisure and what comprises Serious Leisure.
 
Kaplan’s definition of Leisure:  1) an antithesis to work as an economic function, 2) a pleasant expectation and recollection, 3) a minimum of involuntary social-role obligations, 4) a psychological perception of freedom, 5) a close relation to values of the culture, 6) an inclusion of an entire range from inconsequences and insignificance to weightiness and importance, and 7) often, but not necessarily, an activity characterized by the element of play.
 
Serious Leisure doesn’t have a operational definition I’ve found yet but it does have components that make sense. Serious Leisure is made up of Amateurs, Hobbyists, and Volunteers. And I have to say that this definitely describes how I interact with Leisure 100%. In the things I take up (fighting, photography, running, naturalist studies, volunteering at museums, etc), they follow all of the following criteria:
1. distinguishing it from unserious forms is the occasional need to persevere at it
2. the tendency of amateurs, hobbyists, and volunteer to have careers in their endeavors
3. significant personal effort based on special knowledge, training, or skill
4.  there are 8 durable benefits found by amateurs: self-actualization, self-enrichment, recreation or renewal of self, feelings of accomplishment, enhancement of self-image, self-expression, social interaction and belongingess, and lasting physical products of the activity – self-gratification or pure fun is a ninth benefit that is characteristic of unserious leisure
5.  differentiating serious and unserious leisure is the unique ethos that grows up around each instance of the former: serious leisure participants carry on their interests within their own social worlds
6. participants in serious leisure tend to identify strongly with their chosen pursuits
Based on these definitions, everything I do (work, grad school, whatever) is all considered leisure – just Serious Leisure
 
 
Umwelt
Looking up ecological terms I came across this term. It is the German for environment but it means something slightly different than the English “environment.” I found this when reading a translation from the German of an ecological concept and was curious. According to neuroscientist David Eagleman, Umwelt means: “different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different environmental signals.” He uses the examples of a bat and a tick. The tick is blind and deaf and it is going to use heat and odor to direct its existence. Potentially off the same tree, the bat is going to use echolocation. Where it gets wonky is that the tick will believe the world exists completely in body heat and the bat in the reverberation of sound; they cannot exist outside of their lived sensory experiences.
 
For me this has a couple repercussions. The first is related to the 4 types of epistemology that I learned about last week: 1) experience, 2) religion or spiritual, 3) philosophy, and 4) empiricism or science. Umwelt is home in the first way of knowing something – experience. But how does it interact with the other three? For better or worse, Religion, Philosophy, and Science allow us to think beyond our experience but are all intimately related to our Umwelt. For example, if a thought runs against Face Value validity (or, how we think it might make sense in our real world) we might be more prone to dismiss it. Similarly, if it makes sense then we are more prone to accept it. However, what happens when we talk about Angels or the Standard Model of Particle Physics? We have to overcome our Umwelt to develop our thought to make the information make sense.
 
The other thought is related to how the concept Umwelt transcends the natural sciences and plays with literary theories and philosophy. There are only a few theories and concepts that I’m aware of that do this. The consilience of the worlds has a special place for me. Right now, I’m playing with the idea of Keystone Species (as applied to Carnivore Ecology) for the social sciences as a sort of Social Contagion or Key People concept. I digress: Umwelt understood by semioticians is similar to Plato’s Cave analogy. Our mind creates subjective and unique meaning of the things it interacts with in the world. Those items are both made and in the process of being made in our Umwelt as we experience them each time.