dense facts and lizard eyes

"INQUIRERS IN AMERICAN CULTURE STUDIES SHOULD NOT LOOK FOR FACTS IN EXPERIENCE, BUT FOR "DENSE" FACTS—facts which both reveal deeper meanings inside themselves, and point outward to other facts, other ideas, other meanings.. . ."  from Gene Wise, "Some Elementary Axioms for an American Culture Studies" Prospects (1979), 4: 517-547 Cambridge University Press via Jay M "Some [New] Elementary Axioms for an American Cultur[al] Studies" AMerican Studies 1997, vol 38, n. 2, pp. 9- LINKED

At St. Olaf we think of Jim Farrell  (see his new book: The Nature of College) as the king of the dense fact, perhaps even as the originator of this approach.  In fact, it is an American Studies approach which appears to have been suggested by Gene Wise in 1979.  Recently I gained some new perspective on the dense fact approach and disciplinary study when I heard from two remarkable scholars at the 2010 American Academy of Religion meetings in Atlanta.

First: Richard Carp spoke to a workshop on interdisciplinarity.  As I've come to expect from him, he brought clarity to the complex matter without over simplification.

Terminology: mutlidisciplinary is like parallel play.  Two or more disciplines are in play, but not with each other.  I (DeAne) think of this a bit like a meal served in courses.  Interdisciplinary requires that two or more disciplines are working together.  I suppose this might be like using two chop-sticks rather than a spoon which is set down and then a fork.  Transdisciplinary, is applied to a topic or subject of study that requires more than one discipline to consider.  Food, in my view, is a fine example of such a topic.  A dense fact needs to be such a topic.

Richard also spoke of these matters by analogy to sight, more specifically to the difference between the way lizards see and the way human do.  Both have two eyes, but the lizard's eyes are on the side of its head and separated by a snout.  This arrangement prevents depth perception.  In contrast, human eyes are closer together and allow for depth perception.  Interdisciplinary approaches allow for, long for, new dimensions of depth and insight.  Applied to a dense fact, interdisciplinary approaches "reveal deeper meanings inside themselves, and point outward to other facts, other ideas, other meanings."

Second, Jonathan Z. Smith, in a plenary session recalled his proposal for a University of California curriculum (in the mid 1960s) that would require each student to spend a semester, or maybe a year, pursuing all that could be learned starting from a single sentence.  He did not speak of dense facts, but the example he gave from a military report and that he explored surely was like what we intend.  And it demonstrated the sort of anti-disciplinary position that Carp took at the end of our day.  Smith clearly cared more about learning and knowledge than about sharpening the tools of the discipline as ends in themselves.