The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/456562
Winter 2015 17 W π "It is the genius of great fction to reveal the way it feels to be another person," writes philosophy professor Roger Gottlieb in a recent "how-to" article in The Writer magazine called "The Big Questions." Great fction, he contends, grapples with the fundamental philosophical questions that we all face. Although he's better known for his writings on religion and environmentalism, Gottlieb turned to fction in his Nautilus Book Award–winning 2011 short story collection, Engaging Voices: Tales of Morality and Meaning in an Age of Global Warming. He's now working on a novel called The Sacrifce Zone , which explores different meanings of what it means to sacrifce our connection to family, or the earth, or our own peace of mind. Using dialogue as a device to dig deeply into philosophical questions is a time-honored technique that dates back to Socrates, says Gottlieb. "But mere 'talking heads' can be boring," he contends. In his own work, he began letting various voices talk back to the author in nonfction writings. "One thing led to another," he says, "and they began to take on personalities and develop histories." Gottlieb reminds us that some of the most esteemed novelists—from Sartre and Camus, to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky—have used fction as a vehicle to voice philosophical positions. Some novelists allow their characters to deliver lengthy monologues—he points to Ayn Rand as an obvious example. The trick, he tells aspiring writers, is make the characters feel real, so that readers get involved in their struggles and care about their fate. "You've got to embody those ideas in the story," he says. "It's got to be organic to the character and come at a time, in a place, in a way, where the reader is ready to hear it. Philosophy is part of life. Everybody's got some kind of picture of what life is, and what's important. We all refect on and argue about these. To act as if [all that] is not part of life … is to forget an essential part of what makes us human." books Of Philosophy and Fiction Professor takes on life's big questions through literature crisis Too Big to Fail Can having a pork chop for dinner feed the po- tential for a massive economic, environmental, and health disaster? Elisabeth Stoddard, assistant teaching professor of social science and policy studies, wants students to understand how a mix of tax exemptions, weakened zoning authority, and reduced environmental oversight leaves communities adjacent to hog farms—and the na- tion—vulnerable to a complex threat. Regula- tions that that currently allow the nation's hog industry to raise millions of hogs alongside resi- dential communities are a recipe for enormous loss of animal and human life, she contends, not to mention the extended economic impact. When Hurricane Floyd hit the North Carolina food plain in 1999, Stoddard shared the nation's horror as millions of industry hogs drowned. "It was awful thinking of all these panicked ani- mals," she says, "but for the people living nearby, it's what was in the water afterward that was causing problems." The disaster was a glimpse into the devastating implications of large-scale hog deaths. It showed what would result from an outbreak of the most contagious disease in veterinary medicine: foot and mouth disease. "It's a huge waste problem," she says, noting that about nine million hogs re- side on North Carolina's food plain. Stoddard says effects of an outbreak would begin with the immediate economic loss of so many animals and extend to the months-long (or longer) ban on trading that would be imposed. Then there's the pressing need of carcass disposal in an area with almost no burial capacity that has particu- larly vulnerable groundwater supplies. Stoddard projects that an outbreak would crip- ple an industry she says is "too big to fail" and spark a widespread public health catastrophe. "Public health offcials say it's not a matter of if, but when," she says. "We need to rethink this en- tire system. We can't be saved by technology on this one. I tell my students: while you are build- ing technology, consider the social, political, ethi- cal world where lives are at stake and things are unpredictable." —Julia Quinn-Szcesuil —Masako Kuwada, second wife of Gompei Kuwada, Class of 1893 quotable "Kuwada enjoyed a very simple life. He liked to say, 'I'm still a student.' I think he had the humble opinion that his life was still in the training stage, and he was still far from complete as a person—an attitude that continued until the end."