Good advice

I found this list of advice amongst a series of unpublished drafts of blog posts.  I'm not sure where I found it, but it's good advice and even though I've now finished my PhD, it's still encouraging, especially points 3 to 5.

1. Procrastination is part of being a PhD student, and waiting for your thoughts to coalesce which often delivers the inspiration can often feel like procrastination, because it seems like nothing is happening
2. Your motivation will vary in response to different stages over the course of your PhD
3. Your best work is probably yet to come (and is not going to be your PhD thesis)
4. Don't expect your career peak now
5. No PhD student is ever 100% happy with their thesis submission
6. You are not alone ... Lots of PhD students feel the same from all around the world

Reason and Revelation

There is in scripture therefore no defect, but that any man what place or calling soever hee holde in the Church of God, may have thereby the light of his naturall understanding so perfected, that the one being relieved by the other, there can want no part of needfull instruction unto any good worke which God himselfe requireth, be it naturall or supernaturall, belonging simplie unto men as men, or unto men as they are united in whatsoever kinde of societie. It sufficeth therefore that nature and scripture doe serve in such full sort, that they both joyntly and not severallye eyther of them be so complete, that unto everlasting felicitie wee neede not the knowledge of any thing more then these two, may easily furnish our mindes with on all sides, and therefore they which adde traditions as a part of supernaturall necessarye truth, have not the truth, but are in error.

- Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1593, 1.14.5.

Yikes, but that's a nasty passage to try to follow!

There is nothing new under the sun - 4

From the Consideration of the Possibility of a divine Revelation in general, let us, in particular, examine whether the Christian Religion is founded on divine Revelation. How shall we be resolved in this important Point? The Way to do this, a Free-Thinker tells us, is to renounce all Guides, and to think freely for ourselves about this Matter.

But if by Free-thinking be meant bare Reason, and metaphysical Speculations, 'tis impossible for us this Way to come to any Certainty in this present Case; for Revelation in general, and that which Christianity is founded upon, does resolve itself into plain Matter of Fact: Whence the Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Revelation can be only a moral Evidence, arising from ancient Testimonies and authentic History of plain Matter of Fact.

So that if I should propose to inform myself whether the Christian Revelation be true, I must enquire whether the History of the Gospel be true; for if that be true, the Christian Revelation is so too.

Now 'tis impossible to determine this in our Thoughts only, we must take in the Witness of others, who lived at, or near those Times; and examine all the Evidences and Monuments of Antiquity relating to these Facts.

And whoever takes this Pains, will find the History of the Gospel stands upon a firmer Bottom than any other History.

And therefore whoever rejects the History of the Gospel, and yet gives Credit to other Histories, discovers gross Partiality.

But if the Facts recorded in the Gospel be true, then Christianity is founded on divine Revelation; then our Saviour had Authority from God to declare his Will; then he had Power to commission others to teach in his Name, and transmit his Doctrines to Posterity; then he did assist them to do this with Certainty; and then we may suppose these Writings freer from Effects of human Weakness.

Benjamin Ibbot, The True Notion of the Exercise of Private Judgment, or Free-Thinking, 1713.

There is nothing new under the sun - 3

The Foundation of our Religion, as it is purely Christian, is this, that the Sins of Men are not otherwise to be forgiven, nor their Souls saved, than by the Mediation of Jesus Christ, and by that Expiation which he has made with God for our Reconciliation.

The Doctrine the Enemies of Christianity run down, as unreasonable, and foolish, and altogether unworthy of God. They assert, that God is not to be worshiped by a Mediator, nor Pardon of Sins and Reconciliation to be expected by a Sacrifice of Expiation and Atonement; that these Things are disagreeable to the Mercy of God, and to the Freedom of his Grace, both which are essential to him as well as Justice and Vengeance. Or at most they tell us, that Repentance is of itself a sufficient Expiation, and to pretend that we cannot be saved but by the Redemption and Mediation of Jesus Christ, is, say they, as derogatory to the Love and Compassion and Clemency of the divine Nature, as the Worship of him by an Image is to his Spirituality.

But in answer to such Notions I will shew, that the Doctrine of Man's Redemption, and Remission of Sins, by the expiatory Sacrifice of the Blood of Christ, is neither unnecessary nor unreasonable, but are agreeable to the Perfections of God, and manifest his Wisdom and Goodness in our Redemption.

John Turner, The Wisdom of God in the Redemption of Man, 1708.

There is nothing new under the sun - 2

The Infidels of our Times despairing of being able to reason Religion out of the World, seem now to place all their Hopes of Success in sneering and laughing it out of Countenance.

To arm Men therefore against these rude Assaults, wherein their chief Strength lies, I will shew, That whosoever is a true Christian, both in Faith and Practice, can have no Reason to be ashamed of his being so.

Lilly Butler, Religion no Matter of Shame or Reproach, 1709.

There is nothing new under the sun

The Folly of Atheism, from the Pleasures of a Religious Life

Religion tells us we are the Workmanship of a superlatively wise, powerful, and good Being; that we are placed here to view and applaud these glorious Scenes of Heaven and Earth; and that God has created a sufficient Store of all Things, either necessary or convenient for us; and particularly to such as obey him, has promised a Supply of all our Wants, and a Protection from all Dangers; That he has sent his Son into the World to bring Life and Immortality to Light, and to render to Mankind, if they would obey his Commandments, the Promise of eternal Salvation.

Atheism on the contrary would persuade us, that this is all a Dream; that there is no such excellent Being as supposed, that created and preserves us; that all about us is dark senseless Matter, driven on by the wild impulses of Fatality; that Men rose out of the Slime of the Earth, and that what is called the Sou, perishes by Death.

And what Stupidity is this, to let go the Hopes of everlasting Life with Willingness, and entertain the Thoughts of Perdition with Exultation?

This inconsiderate Behaviour of the Atheists is so extremely absurd, that it would be deemed incredible, if it did not occur to our daily Observation. It proclaims aloud, that they are not led astray by their Reasoning, but led captive by their Lusts to the Denial of a God.

Did Religion bestow Heaven to both good and bad Men, there would be no Infidels among us: But it is the Way of attaining it, that makes prophane Men let go the Expectation of it. They will not practise its Rules, and therefore they cannot believe its Promises.

But, however, let us suppose that they have acted like reasonable Men, and upon diligent inquiry have found they were under a necessity of rejecting Religion, upon account of their being obliged to give their assent to such Things as are repugnant to common sense. And here I confess, that did the Offers of eternal Happiness depend upon our giving a full assent to such Things, the Kingdom of Heaven would become the Inheritance of Idiots and Fools. And if the Atheist can shew me any such Absurdities in the Christian Religion, I will either evince them to be Interpolations and Corruptions of the Faith, or yield myself a Proselyte to Infidelity.

Richard Bentley, The Confutation of Atheism, 1692.

Natural Theology

You read it in the blue wind,
the blue water, the rock spill,
the blue hill

rising like a phoenix from ash. Some mind
makes itself known through the markings of light
on air; where earth rolls, right

comes after, our planet’s bright spoor… If you look, you’ll find
truth etched on the tree trunk,
the shark’s tooth, a shell, a hunk

of root and soil. Study from beginning to end.
Alpha and omega – these are the cirrus alphabet,
the Gnostics’ cloudy “so – and yet.”

If a tree falls in a forest, a scared hind
leaps, hearing branches break;
you crawl under the log and shake

honey out of a hollow, eggs from a nest, ants from the end
of a stick; resting, you read God’s name on the back of a bass
in a blue pool; God grows everywhere, like grass.

Kelly Cherry, Natural Theology, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1988, p. 36.

Natural Theology by Rudyard Kipling

Primitive

I ate my fill of a whale that died
And stranded after a month at sea. . . .
There is a pain in my inside.
Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith:
Look how the Gods have afflicted me!

Pagan

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
Anything more than a harmless flea?. . .
The burning plague has taken my household.
Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
Though they were as good as good could be,
I will out and batter the family priest,
Because my Gods have afflicted me!


Medieval

My privy and well drain into each other
After the custom of Christendie. . . .
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
Because the Lord has afflicted me.


Material

I run eight hundred hens to the acre
They die by dozens mysteriously. . . .
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
Not to mention the L. S. D!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
Because this God has afflicted me!


Progressive

Money spent on an Army or Fleet
Is homicidal lunacy. . . .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
Because my God has afflicted me.


Chorus

We had a kettle: we let it leak:
Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week. . .
The bottom is out of the Universe!


Conclusion

This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,
For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure,
And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.
Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!

I love electronic journals!

Currently revising chapter 2 of my thesis. I have a section on natural theology in the Bible, including some discussion of Romans 1:19-20. I'd commented that whatever Paul's intention in these verses, later theologians had interpreted these verses to favour the pursuit of natural theology. I'd left a note to myself asking "which theologians?" Google "natural theology" + Romans. First hit - an article titled "Natural Theology in Paul? Reading Romans 1:19-20" in the International Journal of Systematic Theology. Fortunately, the UNSW library has an electronic subscription. So I can get the article without even leaving my desk. Well, except for walking a few metres to the printer (I printed double sided, of course!)

SCORE!

In other news, I'm on day 3 of my Lite n' Easy diet. I've already eaten my breakfast and morning snack, and I'm HUNGRY!

Vicious cycle

Today, I was trying to finish the final draft of chapter 1. I was determined to stay at uni until it was ready to send off to my supervisors. It's not done. I'm going home. Oh well.

There are two sections that still need major work, and a few smaller points to deal with. I don't ever seem to finish a whole draft in one go. Whenever I send it to my supervisor for feedback, there are always notes to myself in the margin (love the "Comment" feature in Word!) on parts that still need more work or questions that I still need to answer. And then my supervisor adds more comments (he loves Track Changes!), some of which get dealt with as soon as I get the revised version back, but others have been waiting around for a year or more.

While I was working on one section today (criticisms of the "Jacob thesis" concerning the "Anglican origins of modern science," in case you're interested), I came across an old loan slip in one of the books I was using. It seems I borrowed the book on May 6, 2005, and most likely, that wasn't the first time. It reminded me of how long I have been working on this thesis - the number of times I've borrowed particular books and still not finished using them - the way I've gone over, and over, and over these chapter drafts, and they're still not done - the amount of time I've spent on this thesis (nearly 5 years), though it still feels like a last-minute job - and the fact that I'm supposed to submit the thesis on December 15, but there's still so much work to do!

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGG
GGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(In case you were wondering, as I'm sure you all were, the book in question was Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.)

Ouch!

From a review of Margaret C. Jacob's The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1679-1720 (1976):

It would not be unfair to add that both vigour and tenacity are manifest in the continual reiteration of salient points: something for which undergraduates will be grateful, though more sophisticated readers may be frequently conscious of a numbing effect, not unlike that produced by close proximity to a pneumatic drill.

- Geoffrey Holmes, "Science, Reason, and Religion in the Age of Newton," BJHS 11 (1978), 167.

Anxiety and the Grace of God

When I first started reading the web comic Piled High and Deeper (PHD), I was amazed by how much it reflected my life as a PhD student. It was such a comfort to know that I wasn't alone!

This most recent comic particularly resonated with me. I have a tendency to be quite an anxious person. If I have a huge amount of work to do, I'm likely to stress about it to the point where I can't actually do any of it! I'll be absolutely exhausted, but I'll lie awake in bed stressing instead of sleeping. It's so incredibly frustrating. I know that the only way I'm going to get any of the work done at all is to get some sleep, but my mind just won't let me. It has to continue worrying! Very, very frustrating.

My struggles with anxiety are not as bad as they have been in the past, but as I'm coming to the end of my PhD, and the amount of work left seems too much for the amount of time left, I do stress out a bit. There are times when I just don't seem to have the energy to do any work at all, and that's very frustrating when I know (a) how much work I have to get done, and (b) how much I want to get this whole PhD thing over and done with! Sometimes it makes me wonder whether I am cut out for the academic life at all.

I've been reading through John Piper's excellent book Future Grace lately, and I've been greatly encouraged and challenged about my anxiety. (I was also challenged by a fantastic sermon at church last week, on Philippians 4, where the preacher said that we can't be constant pray-ers and constant worriers). Piper's book is about trusting the grace of God to come, not just living in the light of the grace that God has already shown us. Scattered through the book are chapters dealing with different "problems" that we all face, and showing how this idea of Future Grace helps us to deal with them. Fortunately for me, the first of these is anxiety!

Piper writes that the root cause of anxiety is unbelief in God's future grace. By this, he is not meaning to blame anxious people for their feelings, or make them feel even worse about what they are experiencing. Instead, he points out that knowing the fundamental cause of the anxiety can help us deal with it. One possible response he considers is the person who says "I have to deal with feelings of anxiety almost every day; and so I feel like my faith in God's grace must be totally inadequate. So I wonder if I can have any assurance of being saved at all." Piper responds with an awesome illustration:

Suppose you are in a car race and your enemy, who doesn't want you to finish the race, throws mud on your windshield. The fact that you temporarily lose sight of your goal and start to swerve, does not mean that you are going to quit the race. And it certainly doesn't mean that you are on the wrong race track. Otherwise the enemy wouldn't bother you at all. What it means is that you should turn on your windshield wipers and use your windshield washer.

When anxiety strikes and blurs our vision of God's glory and the greatness of the future that he plans for us, this does not mean that we are faithless, or that we will not make it to heaven. It means our faith is being attacked. At first blow, our belief in God's promises may sputter and swerve. But whether we stay on track and make it to the finish line depends on whether, by grace, we set in motion a process of resistance - whether we fight back against the unbelief of anxiety.

(John Piper, Future Grace, Multnomah, Oregon, 1995, pp. 55-56)

I know that John Piper is talking about assurance of salvation here, but I found this illustration encouraging with regard to my PhD. I've been working on my PhD for nearly 5 years, which is way too long, and my deadline of December 15 is looking dicey. However, the fact that I'm struggling with it doesn't necessarily mean that I shouldn't be doing it, or that I'm just not cut out for academic life. Maybe it does, but if that were the case, surely my supervisor would have picked up on that by now? After all, he's an intelligent man, and a widely-respected academic. If I was absolutely hopeless, he would not speak so highly of me, nor would he be so encouraging.

(This is connected with the so-called Impostor Syndrome, where you think that it's only a matter of time until people find out that you really have no idea what you're doing, and that you've just been fooling everyone into thinking that you're capable. Apparently this is very common among academics, but one of my supervisors once told me that it's the people who don't think that they are impostors who really are!)

So, where does all this leave me? I still struggle with anxiety and feelings of self-doubt, but I'm trying to put it all in God's hands and trust in his purposes. If finishing my PhD by December 15 is part of his plan for me, I believe that he will help me to accomplish this. If he has called me to serve him as an academic, he will help me get there in the end. That doesn't mean it will be easy, but "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

More JAS Classics

From another meeting with my supervisor:

People are dumb... You're going to meet a lot of people who heave their heads up their bums, pardon the expression, about historiography.

There's more to natural philosophy than meets the actor's eye.

The idea is that it's not just the ideas.

There be Jesuits there! I shouldn't go there if I were you!

It's so "yesterday" to think about mathematical sciences. Like there would have been a modern world if there hadn't been any mathematical sciences and scientific revolution, if it had all been natural history. For Christ's sake. It's just they don't know anything. They don't want to.

Aldridge

Continuing on from yesterday's post about changing my name...

My supervisor was also commenting that "Aldridge" sounded very American upper class - "The Aldridges of Boston" or something like that. He thought it might have been a Mayflower name, but after a quick Google search, I can't find any evidence of that.

However, Aldridge is a town in England, which Matt and I visited while we were over there. We were hoping to get a photo of the newest Aldridge in front of a nice "Welcome to Aldridge" sign, but we couldn't find one. We asked at a shop, and apparently touched on a sore point - the shop keeper was just reading over the minutes of a council meeting about trying to get such a sign!



Interestingly, Aldridge is in Walsall, which is where my grandfather was from. So, in becoming an Aldridge by marriage, I've really just returned to my roots!



Update: I think my supervisor was confusing "Aldridge" with "Alden" - John Alden was a character in a poem called The Courtship of Miles Standish. He mentioned this story, and the possibility that there was a John Aldridge involved, but sadly it was John Alden.

Hilarious!

I wonder if I can work an excuse like this into my review next week?

The last time I studied Malebranche’s Reserche de la Verite was back in the mid-sixties. I was mistakenly given credit for French competence as my dissertation topic was Duhem, but I never managed to find the building where the course on non-fiction French was held. The only English translation of Malebranche back then was the seventeenth century one. At UT Austin it was kept in the rare book room at the top (26th) of the library. While dutifully studying it I heard a drum beat and looking out the window I saw a procession far below carrying a coffin. I went down to find out what was going on. It turned out to be an anti-war demonstration, which I joined and never went back. Well, not quite. In August 1966 I planned to return, but a friend (who, being a native Texan, took assassinations and mass murders in stride as an everyday thing in those days) casually told me I probably should delay my visit, as about 50 people had been shot and a score had been killed. This was the famous Texas Tower Sniper, and the library was closed off after he was killed above the 26th floor. That’s my excuse for not grasping Malebranche in graduate school.

as well as I should have.

Oops

I missed the "90 days to go" milestone. That was yesterday. Now it's only 89 days to go!

I'm in a bad mood today. I got an email from my supervisor yesterday with comments on my draft of chapter 5 and the news that I have to rethink a lot of the way the second half of my thesis is structured and rationalised. Not good. At the moment, I'm feeling completely defeated by my thesis.

Why can't we just elope now and I'll finish the thesis later?!

Three months to go!

OK, now this is just getting scary! I can't wait to get married to my wonderful fiance, but when I think about all the stuff that I have to get done by then, I freak out a little. OK, I freak out a lot. Pulling my hair out and moaning is usually involved. Here's a snapshot of what needs to be done:

• Finish PhD (by June 1, otherwise Matt says the wedding is off!)
• It's hard to estimate the percentage completed, but I've got one chapter in nearly final form, two chapters getting close to that, and three chapters that still need a lot of work. Plus the conclusion and introduction. And formatting and referencing.
• 11 weeks of teaching
• I'm teaching three subjects this session. I've got three face-to-face hours of teaching per week (two for history of medicine, one for the scientific revolution) and two online groups for science and religion
• Beyond preparing for and facilitating tutorial discussions, there's all the marking. I get out of the take-home exam for one subject because it's due while I'm on the honeymoon (!), and fortunately I have a whole week to mark all the science and religion journals before the wedding.
• Wedding planning
• Wedding cars
• Hair and make-up (i.e. find someone to do it on the day)
• Dress fittings for me and the bridesmaids
  
• Decide on vows, sermon, readings etc.
• Finalise music and ask musicians
• Decide on stuff for the reception - will there be dancing, what kind of music etc.
• Make and send invitations
• Order bonbonniere, make place cards
• Decide on flowers - I went to see the florist on Monday night, but I had a migraine, so it was a bit difficult to make decisions
• Gift registry
• Probably other things that I can't think of right now
  
• We still need to find somewhere to live.
  
• We put in an application yesterday for a unit that would have been perfect, but we missed out. Oh well. That would have been just too easy! Now it's back to the drawing board...
  

Overall, we're doing quite well with the wedding stuff. We've finished our marriage preparation course with Matt's minister, and that was very interesting and helpful. A lot of things have been done, and I know we'll get there in the end. Actually, it's probably the PhD that's stressing me out the most at the moment.

Still, only three months until I get to marry the most wonderful man in the world! Hurrah!

Getting my hopes up

Received this email this morning:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Cambridge Platonist Spirituality (Classics of Western Spirituality) by Charles Taliaferro have also purchased The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context: Politics, Metaphysics and Religion (International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées) by G.A. Rogers. For this reason, you might like to know that The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context: Politics, Metaphysics and Religion (International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées) is now available. You can order yours for just $230.00 by following the link below.

The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context: Politics, Metaphysics and Religion (International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées)
G.A. Rogers
Price: $230.00

Just $230? And I was getting all excited when I saw "Cambridge Platonists" in the subject line of an email from Amazon...

Against anthropocentrism

For my part, I cannot believe that all the things in the world were so made for Man, that they have no other use. For it is highly absurd and unreasonable, to think that Bodies of such vast magnitude as the fixt stars, were only made to twinkle to us...

But though in this sence it be not true, that all things were made for Man; yet thus far it is, that all the Creatures in the world may be some way or other useful to us, at least to exercise our Wits and Understandings, in considering and contemplating of them, and so afford us Subject of Admiring and Glorifying their and our Maker.

- John Ray, Wisdom of God, pp. 128-9.

Doing science in eternity

Life after life after death - see also Byron's excellent series - but what will we be doing on the new earth? Perhaps some of the same things we've been doing on this earth, including, for John Ray, science!

It may be (for ought I know, and as some Divines have thought) part of our business and employment in Eternity to contemplate the Works of God, and give him the Glory of his Wisdom, Power and Goodness manifested in the Creation of them. I am sure it is part of the business of a Sabbath-day, and the Sabbath is a Type of that eternal Rest; for the Sabbath seems to have been first instituted for a commemoration of the Works of the Creation, from which God is said to have rested upon the Seventh Day.

- John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, London, 1691, p. 124

I hope that means it's ok that I'm working on my PhD on a Sunday...