[InsideUni] Critical Thinking Skills with UniScoops ⚡️

Exciting news! We’ve worked with our friends at InsideUni and InsideUni Medicine to write a guide on honing your critical thinking skills (especially for university applications), and on how UniScoops can help you.

💡 The full guide talks about…

• What is critical thinking?

• Why is critical thinking important?

• How can I improve my critical thinking skills?

🔎 Find out more

[ENGLISH] How do you capture an image in words? 💬

These two lines, with their uneven spacing, make up Ezra Pound’s ‘In a station of the metro’, published in Poetry magazine in April 1913. Pound described wanting to capture a fleeting moment that he had experienced while on the Metro in Paris and, in doing so, he gives us a great example of Imagist poetry.

In his manifesto of Imagism, ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’, Pound described an ‘Image’ as ‘that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time’. It is important that Pound chooses ‘presents’ rather than ‘describes’, here, because he explicitly instructed Imagist poets not to describe: ‘remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it.’ Pound’s philosophy of Imagism was not the only one that existed at the start of the 20th century, though: there were several poets, including T.E. Hulme and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), who were trying to capture images in their poems, and writing about what that meant to them.

💡 Things to consider

• Breaking away from poetic forms: In T.E. Hulme’s 1908 ‘Lecture on Modern Poetry’, he said, ‘We are no longer concerned that stanzas shall be shaped and polished like gems, but rather that some vague mood shall be communicated.’ Imagism challenges the importance of poetic form by rebelling against it. So, how is the content of a poem linked to its form? Is the form ever more important than what the poem is saying?

• Prose vs. verse: Amy Lowell, another influential imagist poet, wrote poetry that was dubbed ‘polyphonic prose’ by John Gould Fletcher. When you look at a lot of her poems, they seem like paragraphs rather than stanzas. Where does prose start and poetry end? How do you distinguish between the two when formal poetic forms have been discarded?

• Objectivity: When Ezra Pound first submitted a selection of Imagist poems for publication in 1912, he described them as ‘objective’. This is interesting because it goes against a lot of our core beliefs about literature itself! Can poetry ever be objective if it has a human author? What does objectivity in poetry even mean?

🔎 Find out more

• In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound | Poetry Magazine (poetryfoundation.org)

• A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste by Ezra Pound | Poetry Magazine (poetryfoundation.org)

• Peter Jones, ‘Introduction’ to Imagist Poetry (London: Penguin, 1972)

[PHILOSOPHY] The relationship between Art and Nature 🌲

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with beauty and art. Traditionally, aesthetics did not include nature. This is because traditional notions of the aesthetic ignored natural beauty, instead strictly defining aesthetics as the philosophy of art. This interesting exclusion of nature raises thought-provoking questions about what constitutes art and how we respond to art.

💡 Things to consider

• The Sublime in Nature and Art: Philosopher Ronald Hepburn talks about how sublimity of nature i.e. how it allows one to experience the overwhelming energies of nature and the vastness of space and time, as well as ‘realise’ one’s own place in space and time. Reflect on the concept of the sublime and how it manifests in both nature and art. How do experiences of grandeur and awe in the natural world compare to encounters with extraordinary works of art? Are there similarities in the emotional responses they evoke, and what might these similarities reveal about nature and aesthetics?

• Art and nature = too different?: Hepburn discusses one objection to his argument, that nature is just too different to conventional art for it to count as an aesthetic experience. For instance, in art, the appreciator is often detached from the art object, whereas in nature, one is often surrounded (e.g. by a forest). Can you think of any other differences between art and nature? Do you think these differences are large enough for us to exclude nature from aesthetics?

• Implications for Aesthetic Education: Does/should nature change the way in which we teach people (especially children) about art? Some people believe that art institutions such as museums are elitist: does including the natural world democratise art and make it more accessible? Should this even be a factor one considers when trying to ‘define’ art?

🔎 Find out more

• More on the sublime (New World Encyclopedia)

• Hepburn, Ronald. "Contemporary aesthetics and the neglect of natural beauty." British analytical philosophy (1966): 285-310.

[PSYCHOLOGY] Are emotions universal? ❤️

The universality of emotions is a long-standing debate within the field of Psychology, with studies providing support for both sides of the argument. On the one hand, we have the universalist standpoint which considers that emotions are products of evolution and so can be observed in the same way across the human species. On the other hand, relativist theories would argue that emotions are highly influenced by the social and cultural contexts we are in, meaning that the ways in which we experience them are dependent on a number of factors. For this psychology scoop, we’ll be looking at the research evidence to determine whether we can come to a consensus on whether emotions are universal or culturally relative!

💡 Things to consider

• Mixed evidence from language studies: At first glance, findings from language studies appear to lean more towards the side of cultural relativism, with such research operating on the assumption that different emotion words describe separate emotional experiences. This is supported by the existence of culture-specific emotion words. It is also supported by the fact that the quantity of emotion-related words varies greatly between languages, with some containing as little as seven basic emotion words (such as Chewong in Malaysia), whilst others have more than 2000 (such as English).

  However, evidence also exists which demonstrates the ability to display relevant behaviours for an emotion, even if a word does not exist for this in your language. For example, studies of the Tahitian people found that although they did not have a word for sadness in their vocabulary, they were still able to show associated reactions and behaviours, which suggests that the experience of this emotion can, in fact, be considered to be universal.

• Mixed evidence from studies of facial expressions: Darwin’s work and theories of evolution have significantly contributed to the notion that emotions are experienced universally. His claim that emotional expressions are inherited and woven into our shared human nature provides the foundation for the proposal of a set of basic emotions. Ekman’s neuro-cultural theory of emotion (1972) expands on this idea by categorising emotions into 7 states (which include happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise and contempt) and suggesting that these states control our facial expressions, as a result of our hardwired internal programs. Findings from cross-cultural research have further supported ideas of universality, as they have demonstrated that facial expressions of these basic emotions can be correctly recognised across both literate and preliterate cultures. It is important, however, to note the limitation of cross-cultural research often being carried out from a Western perspective which fails to account for crucial cultural distinctions. This consideration has resulted in the suggestion of the existence of display rules, defined as “cultural norms that dictate the management and modification of emotional displays depending on social circumstances” (Ekman & Friesman, 1969)

• So, what’s the verdict? In summary, it is clear that a conclusive answer to this debate has not yet been uncovered and it is vital that neither the universal perspective, nor the relativist approach, are disregarded. The existence of evidence for both sides of the argument suggests that it is best to instead view emotions from an intermediary position, equally acknowledging the existence of universal basic emotions and facial expressions and the ways in which emotions are influenced by social factors, such as language and culture.

🔎 Find out more

• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1207/s15327965pli1601_01?needAccess=true

• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699930441000481?src=recsys

• https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-2909.115.1.102

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👀 Keep your eyes peeled for…

• 12th December - University of Cambridge Webinar for Mature Students

• 12th December - University of Oxford Schools Christmas Chemistry Conference

• 13th December - University of Law Webinar: What do Hackers Know About You?

• 13th December - Middlesex University: Stats Important! Christmas Maths Lecture

• 13th December - UEA Webinar: You’ve Applied: What Happens Next?

• 13th December - InsideUni Medicine Interview Webinar (see below for more details!)