Comment on Late 1900s
LarsIsCool@lemmy.world 5 weeks agoTo answer the question: The professor assumes the email referred to 1900-1910 with “late 1900s”. As this was normal 20 years ago (and still gets used).
To ask a question back: From www.bucknell.edu/fac-staff/john-penniman, I read:
John Penniman is Associate Professor and chair of Religious Studies
I would say for religious studies it should be fine. But also for other areas, why can’t you use 1994 papers?
I assumed they might be working in certain fields of science where the most progress is very recent so old papers will be very incomplete and sometimes even wrong.
My field is particle physics and while a paper from 1994 wouldn’t be completely useless, I would need to check if recent papers still confirm the same results.
InputZero@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It depends on what field you’re studying. Some fields of study, like social studies, move very quickly. So it’s not uncommon for someone studying one of those subjects to exclude research that’s even 10 to 15 years old because things move so quickly.
A different subject, say hydrologic engineering has been studied for hundreds of years and doesn’t change very quickly. So a publication from 1994 could be just as valid today as it was then. Every topic is different and without more context the meme as is, is just meant to incite a reaction. Not to tell us about something that actually happened.
Gloomy@mander.xyz 5 weeks ago
I study social study and frequently use papers that are referring to Karl Marx. Or feminist literature from the 70s. Or black literature from the 60s.
antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Yeah, I’d sooner say the situation is reverse, social studies would move slower and less “definitively” than natural sciences. I’m into linguistics and literature and for me it’s nothing unusual to use scholarship and materials all the way from the 19th century. Of course, when you’re working with old literature or old language, you need old materials too… To me it’s very interesting and important to know what Aristotle thought of Homer, while it’s perfectly irrelevant for a doctor to know what Galen thought of the humours or for a chemist what Newton thought of alchemy.