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Paul Cantrell

This thread is now available as a blog post:
innig.net/teaching/liberal-art

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In college, I took a class called The Letters of Paul. I took it for two very good reasons:

1. I was (and am) named Paul.
2. The prof, Cal Roetzel, was (and is) cool.

I didn’t figure it was an especially practical course. It was for fun, for the challenge, for the cultural knowledge, for the pleasure of doing it.

WHAT LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION IS FOR: A THREAD

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innig.netWhat Liberal Arts Education Is For – Teaching – innig.net
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Paul Cantrell

The class turned out to be more less “A Letter (singular) of Paul:” we spent the semester reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, at a rate of about 3 sentences per week.

Why so slow? Because we read multiple translations of each of those sentences, and multiple commentaries on them, spanning many centuries — plus a bit of social and historical context. Slow, diligent, careful. And…
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Paul Cantrell

We asked, over and over: “What do we think Paul was thinking, given that he chose those words? What do we think each commentator thought Paul was thinking? Why do we think they thought he was thinking that? Does it really make sense for Paul to have thought X? For us to think they thought he thought X?“ …etc. A theory of mind hall of mirrors!
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Paul Cantrell

The heart of the course: “What can we learn about what other people are really thinking, about their mental models of the world, by paying very careful attention to the words they use?”

And I thought that course had •absolutely no practical relevance• to my career as a software developer until I started encountering text like this (from a presentation by Lenore Zuck, fm.csl.sri.com/UV10/slides/UV-, ht @AndrzejWasowski):

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Taken from a real spec! Section 2.7.6: Security (~ page 10) “If the system sends a signal hot then send a message to the operator.” Section 9.3.4: Temperatures (~ page 150) “If the system sends a signal hot and T60°, then send a message to the operator.” Summary of critical aspects (~ page 650) When the temperature is maximum the system should display a message on the screen unless no operator is on the site except when T<60°.”
What’s Wrong (cont) • Specification capture led by development doesn’t necessarily lead to acceptable systems • Insufficient focus on determining that spec indeed covers user’s intent • Insufficient focus on whether system is usable
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