astronomy

Stevan Harnad

Stevan Harnad is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stevan Harnad rather than just read about it. In short: Stevan Robert Harnad (Hernád István Róbert, Hesslein István; born 1945) is a Canadian cognitive scientist based in Montreal. Early life and education Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary.

Key takeaways

Stevan Harnad belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stevan Harnad to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stevan Harnad from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stevan Robert Harnad (Hernád István Róbert, Hesslein István; born 1945) is a Canadian cognitive scientist based in Montreal.

Early life and education Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. Harnad completed his Master of Arts degree in Psychology from McGill University in 1969 and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton University in 1992. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Liège in 2013.

Research Harnad's research interests are in cognitive science, open access and animal sentience. He is currently professor of psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), McGill University, and professor emeritus of cognitive science at the University of Southampton. Elected external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2001 (resigned in protest against the government of Viktor Orbán, 8 October 2016), he was Canada Research Chair in cognitive science 2001–2015. His research is on categorization, communication, cognition, and consciousness and he has written extensively on categorical perception, symbol grounding, origin of language, lateralization, the Turing test, distributed cognition, scientometrics, and consciousness, and lately, large language models. Harnad is a former student of Donald O. Hebb and Julian Jaynes.

Research publishing and open access In 1978, Harnad was the founder of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, of which he remained editor-in-chief until 2002. In addition, he founded Psycoloquy (an early electronic journal sponsored by the American Psychological Association), CogPrints (an electronic eprint archive in the cognitive sciences hosted by the University of Southampton), and the American Scientist Open Access Forum (since 1998; now the Global Open Access List, GOAL). Harnad, an active promoter of open access self-archiving and EPrints is currently Editor-in-Chief of the refereed journal Animal Sentience.

Scholarly skywriting Scholarly skywriting, coined by Harnad around 1987, is the combination of multiple email and a topic threaded web archive such as a newsgroup, electronic mailing list, hypermail, netnews or Internet forum, linked and sortable by date, author, or subject-heading threads. The name derives from the idea that texts can be written in the "sky" (via multiple email and a web archive) for all to see ("skyreading") and all to add their own comments to ("skywriting"). Harnad suggested that it could be a kind of open peer review, a supplement to classical peer review, but not a substitute for it. What Harnad called student skywriting is scholarly skywriting done in a teaching/learning context.

Political activism Harnad is the author of a 2011 open letter signed by over 60 external members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences addressed to the Academy's President, József Pálinkás, concerning the press and police harassment campaign against Hungarian philosophers who were critics of the current Hungarian ruling party, Fidesz, and its prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Harnad resigned from his external membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on 8 October 2016 in protest against the increasingly "Illiberal democracy" of Viktor Orban.

Animal welfare Harnad is Editor-in-Chief of the refereed journal Animal Sentience launched in 2015 by the Institute of Science and Policy of The Humane Society of the United States. A vegan, Harnad is increasingly active in animal welfare, animal rights, and animal law.

See also List of animal rights advocates "Subversive Proposal"

References

External links Interview by Marc Bekoff Open Access Archivangelism Blog, Stevan Harnad's blog on Open Access Publications by Harnad archived in Archipel, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stevan Harnad

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stevan Harnad claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stevan Harnad before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stevan Harnad ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stevan Harnad

In research: Stevan Harnad appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stevan Harnad in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stevan Harnad is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1945 births, Academic staff of the Université du Québec à Montréal, Academics of the University of Southampton, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stevan Harnad outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stevan Harnad in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stevan Harnad means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stevan Harnad out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stevan Harnad in simple terms?

Stevan Robert Harnad (Hernád István Róbert, Hesslein István; born 1945) is a Canadian cognitive scientist based in Montreal. Early life and education Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary.

Why does Stevan Harnad matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stevan Harnad?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stevan Harnad.