The Power and Promise of Citizen Science

By Sheldon Greaves, Ph.D. Ocean Sanctuaries 11 December 2017 (Download PDF) A recent essay[1] by Philip Mirowski has caught the attention of the Citizen Science community, by raising some trenchant questions despite several questionable assertions and assumptions about the Citizen … Continue reading

Books Received: Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World

By Sheldon Over the last few years I have been involved in a long-term experiment that concerns the role to be played by lay scholars in a local church community. This began back in 2009 when we were living in … Continue reading

Best Practices: On Marking Books

By Sheldon “A virgin book bears no offspring.” — Hasidic Proverb Continuing a theme I’ve been on for a while, which is a retro journey through the wonders of dead-tree format information storage. Allow me this one indulgence from that … Continue reading

A Proposal Regarding Local Scholars-in-Residence

What follows is a document that I hope to publish as a short booklet. The purpose is to suggest making the institution of a “Scholar-in-Residence” a regular part of church parish life. Although this document is targeted at an ecclesiastical … Continue reading

Paper, Pencil, Pen, Brush: The Lost Art of Field Sketching

By Sheldon Greaves Note: this post originally appeared on the Citizen Scientists’ League website. With few other possible exceptions, the digital camera is probably the single most useful tool available to the citizen scientist. Both in the workshop and out … Continue reading

Was the Fall of Rome a Good Thing?

By Sheldon Greaves There is a lot of talk these days comparing the United States to the late Roman Empire. Like Rome, we are an empire, which people more freely acknowledge than they did even ten years ago. There is … Continue reading

Editorial Note

By Sheldon Greaves In addition to my posts on Cogito!, I have also posted to other blogs. One of these, Unexpected Leisure, grew out of my effort to make sense of losing my job as a result of the worst … Continue reading

Contemplating the Monastic Option

Some of my recent reading has been some very interesting material by Morris Berman, an author who is new to me and, I find that I have been missing something. His work is well-considered, well-sourced, and easier to read than … Continue reading

On Slow Reading Seminars

It’s long past time that I describe an extended experiment in group learning conducted over the last few years. The setting was Christ Church Episcopal in Portola Valley, California, where my spouse and I were Scholars in Residence, conducting seminars … Continue reading