An Update to the Gun Curiosity Seminar

Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane has an update on the Professor's popular course. An Invitation to Gun Curiosity: The motivation for my Sociology of Guns seminar redesign

In a recent post about my revamped Sociology of Guns seminar, I discussed moving from a topic-based approach to a question-based approach to the material. I connected this shift to the increasing importance of intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, and humility as learning outcomes for the course, but I didn’t fully explain the reasoning behind it.

Briefly: questions open up inquiry and conversation in ways topics do not. A topic like “gun violence” or “concealed carry” can be covered and closed. A question keeps going. As Peter Berger put it in Invitation to Sociology, the first wisdom of sociology is that “things are not what they seem.”

This put me in mind of a Zen koan.

The koan is about A Cup of Tea:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

One of the major problems with the world we live in today, is that everyone is so sure of what is true, or they have abandoned the idea of objective truth completely, in favor of personal feelings. Not sure how you do inquiry in the face of that. (If you know the acceptable answer, before you do the study, why bother to do the study?)

There are more details about the class, a photo of a very-nice AR, and another of some snacks, that made me hungry for dessert. Click thru.

Professor Yamane, with the approval of his students, has posted some of those students work from the past seminars. They have been fascinating reads. I look forward to seeing what this year will bring.