Letters of recomendation for Patricia Princehouse from Stephen Jay Gould & I. Bernard Cohen |
Gould Cohen |
I Bernard Cohen 1997 October 29 Dear Prof Kim I am writing this letter in recommendation of MS Patricia Princehouse for a post at your university. The course for which she is to be engaged is in the philosophy of biology. MS Princehouse is especially gifted in this area and brings to it a deep and sound knowledge of biology plus a study of the development of primary biological concepts. A special focus of her studies has been the general area of evolutionary thought and she has necessarily been concerned with broader philosophical issues. Year before last MS Princehouse was a course assistant in a seminar of mine at Harvard. Before long, she had established herself as more of a colleague than an assistant. She had an extremely good rapport with the students and made presentations that were clear, well organized, witty and knowledgeable. She was a great hit with the students. From what MS Princehouse has told me about the teaching assignment at Case Western, I would say that she is extremely competent for the instruction you envisage. Above all, she is a very gifted teacher who will certainly be as successful at Case Western as she was at Harvard. Needless to say, if there is any more information that you may wish to have about MS Princehouse's qualifications, please call upon me. Truly yours I. Bernard Cohen Victor S Thomas Professor (emer.) of the History of Science, Harvard University |
Stephen Jay Gould November 25, 1997 Dear Professor Kim, I have been away from Boston for several weeks, and have just received a belated request from my graduate student, Patricia Princehouse, for a recommendation on her qualifications to teach a philosophy of biology course at Case Western. As time is short (and I am very late with this) and as she is so obviously (and marvelously) qualified for this important job may I take the expedient of sending a xerox of a general letter that a wrote for her three years ago (to give some basic background about her history and intellectual interests) and then just add some particular comments in this letter about her teaching abilities. I have had extensive opportunity to observe and interact with her as a teacher because she has served as a teaching fellow in both my major courses at Harvard my technical undergraduate course on Evolution (taught with R.C. Lewontin), and my general core curriculum science course for non-majors: The history of earth and life. In short she has done a wonderful job ---insightful, always responsive and sensitive to students, original in her approach, conscientious (almost to a fault she really needn't knock herself out so much), and invariably most highly rated by students (we have, and publish, an annual questionnaire for evaluating both professors and teaching assistants). I should also add that teaching fellows in my general course are the very opposite of the adumbrators and explainers-of-the-prof's-lecture automata that constitute the stereotype for graduate assistants (and that does not help them to become competent teachers). My teaching fellows give "parallel courses" to my lectures that is, they organize their own independent topics and material, and really teach entirely separate and self-generated mini-courses. Finally, although Ms. Princehouse is receiving her degree in the history of science department, she is fully qualified to teach a course in the philosophy of biology. The fields are so intimately intertwined (not always the case for the history and philosophy of all sciences, but definitely so for biology, where recent history has been so intertwined with changing views on the most abstract conceptual matters). Ms. Princehouse has read widely and deeply in the best of recent literature on and relevant to the philosophy of biology from Kuhn, to Hull to Sober to Brandon to Lloyd. In short, she is superbly qualified both by intellectual breadth and by teaching experience for this important role. Sincerely, Stephen Jay Gould Professor of Geology Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology 1993 I have known Patricia Princehouse for 5 or 6 years. She studied Anthropology in the graduate faculties at Yale, but had to withdraw as a result of illness (an unfortunately common problem of tropical disease load for those who do field work in equatorial areas), and received a masters degree for her good work there. She now wishes to develop the historical side of her general interest in evolutionary theory by PhD work in the history of science. I write this letter to offer my strongest support. What impresses me most about Ms. Princehouse is her uncompromising independence and insistence on looking at any problem from a different point of view. She is in no sense dogmatic or unwilling to explore a range of alternatives, but she is always seeking a different way that might break a logjam of professional puzzlement or ossification. For these reasons of originality and non-dogmatism, conversation with her is a very great pleasure indeed. She has strong preparation in several areas central to the history of science. Of course, she has her training in science, but I would also point out her strong background in several languages, including fluency in French (she will need to learn German). Although she does not have a degree in history, she has taken a wide variety of undergraduate courses in this area and has always maintained a strong personal interest. She also has much experience in journalism, and this will be important for the particular subject she wishes to pursue in thesis research. As one strong factor in her support, Ms. Princehouse has an already well worked out idea for thesis research one that strikes me as particularly interesting, and that I personally support very strongly. She wishes to work largely in the area of oral history, and on the subject of the recent macroevolution controversy within evolutionary theory. I am biased of course, but this, to me, is the most interesting theoretical issue in evolution today one that will endure long after a variety of other issues that now receive more overt attention fade into the background of pretty ordinary intellectual discourse. The range of the subject is great, from Kimura's theory of neutralism to all the recent excitement about mass extinction. The time is now, for several of the key participants may not be with us much longer. I think particularly of the few remaining members of the old guard of the modern synthesis Ernst Mayr comes to mind first, of course, but I also think of another level of scientist now in their late 60's or early 70's, who shaped the paradigm of individual selection and adaptation in the 1960's particularly John Maynard Smith and George Williams. Sincerely Stephen Jay Gould Professor of Geology Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology |
