What made you first question the significance of your existence to the world and to yourself? Was it a reminder of your mortality – how fragile we are and how easy it is to die yet how fiercely we fight against the inevitable? Or maybe it was the realisation of how complex the Universe is and how little we actually know about it? Perhaps you were just walking down the street and you looked up at the sky, or you were in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but more and more water in sight; and at that moment it struck you how tiny you really are and how little you mean to the Universe. Or, probably, you were just lying on your bed staring at the ceiling when there was a sudden moment where you ask yourself, ‘What on earth am I doing here?’

For people who lived through World War II or was born in the aftermath prevailed by suffering and hopelessness, it was probably the brutal and painful truth of the human condition. What did we fight for? What did we die for? What made us do so much to have a slightly better chance at survival when we might die any second? Now what? What binds us to life now? For my research, I have been studying literature in East Asia since World War II. It was a period of disillusionment, and with works of western philosophers’ translated into various languages, existentialism had never been more prominent in Chinese and Japanese literature. A girl who inherited a mansion from her Mom but chose to sleep in a garage with nothing but a few blankets and empty applecart as furniture; villagers who thought she must be crazy because they were too busy working and studying non-stop to think about how ridiculous and pointless their life was; a boy who eventually chose to embrace the mundane life of working at factory because there is no escape from monotony anyway; a man who did not answer to his wife in a flood to take care of a woman he had never met before because he believed one should only live in the moment and at that moment he felt responsible for the sick person. These are only a few of the characters from novels and novellas I have read. Existential notions are not always explicitly spelt out but are undoubtedly a fundamental concern to the authors in the characterisation of every single person – or dogs – that appear in the story.

As thinkers, it is not uncommon for us to ponder on the meaning of our lives. I hope this post is not a trigger of an existential crisis – that is far from the intention. This post, as well as my project, aims to examine the value of our lives and not to escape from the question by too quickly deeming life unworthy or by blindly believe in an inherent meaning. Perhaps you think, ‘Why does that matter? We are living right now and whether we like it or not, tonight we will still set up an alarm clock so that we make it to work on time tomorrow, then spend the day writing emails or looking at numbers so that we can afford food and an alarm clock, so that we can make it to work on time…’ However, I believe addressing the issue and living with a full awareness of the meaninglessness of life – if that is the conclusion you reach – is essentially different from living with the illusion of meaningfulness.

My research has led me to explore a wide range of fiction and essays. With guidance from my supervisor, I have thoroughly enjoyed the project, for which I would like to thank Lord Laidlaw for making the resources available. I also owe my personal development to the coordinators, speakers and everyone I have met in this programme. I feel genuinely honoured to be part of this.

I began my research in May, when I visited Heidelberg University to attend a conference hosted by members of the association of European Women in Mathematics. An aim of my project is to understand more about the gender imbalance in Mathematics, and the conference provided a really interesting insight into how the subject is perceived across Europe. It was a fantastic experience, and I would definitely recommend a trip to Heidelberg – it is a beautiful city!

Next week will be the last of my 5 weeks of research this year. It has been a steep learning curve, yet very rewarding, and I have learnt a considerable amount about both research and leadership. 

I am creating an open-source database which will be made freely available to the public to view, query and expand. My project departs from the convention of tabular databases, and enters the relatively undiscovered world of linked data. Although little is currently understood about these methodologies, they are revolutionising the web. Data can be openly shared and used across the internet with the help of common vocabularies, and new facts can be inferred from existing relationships.

It has occurred to me that the way the internet works is greatly under-appreciated. When you hit the search button on Google, the subsequent half-a-second process which takes place to produce a list of search results is more complex than you might imagine, and it is fascinating to discover the depth behind an interface which over half of the world’s population use on a daily basis.

Leadership has been integral to my project so far, in situations ranging from coordinating and leading meetings, to responding to issues and grasping opportunities to expand my network and deepen my knowledge. Over the past 4 weeks, my research has thrown up several unexpected challenges, such as spending my first week simply installing the required software. Yet from challenges arise opportunities, and in overcoming this particular hurdle, I learnt valuable lessons in general installation methods and ways to interact directly with a computer system, which I am sure will be of use to me in the future. 

I would like to thank Lord Laidlaw for this opportunity, and also the Laidlaw team at St. Andrews. I have so far benefitted greatly from this experience, and I look forward to continuing my research next year. 

 

Hello from an unusually sunny St Andrews! I’m Zoe, a Laidlaw Scholar for the school of art history, and I will be uploading a few blogs this week. For my first post, I thought I’d focus on the leadership aspect of the programme – an aspect that I was perhaps a bit tentative in undertaking.

When describing myself, ‘leader’ is not an adjective that springs to mind. As an art history student, when somebody says the word leadership, my mind cannot help but conjure up images of Delacroix’s ‘Liberty leading the people’, or David’s

‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ ( 19^th Century France really enjoyed paintings of people dramatically pointing). Someone noble, magisterial, somebody – well, pointing. Of course I have assumed some roles of authority in the past, but I couldn’t really compare myself to Napoleon. You can imagine therefore that I felt unprepared, to say the least, when we went on our first Laidlaw Leadership Weekend to Hospitalfield in March, and I am sure that I can vouch for quite a few others in my cohort as well. It was with great relief – and amazement – that on the first full day, I was given a very official-looking document that explained that I was a leader, that we all were, and gave twenty pages of detail explain exactly why and how. Brilliant!

This impressive document to which I am referring is the ‘Everything DiSC® Workplace Profile’, a tool that for over thirty years workplaces have been using to analyse the characteristics of individuals, and uses this to suggest the motivators and stressors that can affect the way you might cooperate in a team-based, project-led environment. Not to say that it is 100% perfect, however this little booklet, with the help of Alex, Cat and Eilidh’s deciphering, allowed us all to realise that the image of a leader Delacroix and David were imagining was more of a mythical creature best left immortilised in oil paint. Leaders can be quiet, not in a position of power, or are just one person of a group. A leader is, actually, somebody who conveys their purpose clearly but not overbearingly, who accepts and builds upon what other people contribute, and through communication blends both of these into a common, attainable goal.

The DiSC® Profile is a simple way of understanding this; there is D (Dominance), i(Influence), S (steadiness) and C (Conscientiousness). Your given dot can fall in or between these categories, giving twelve possible letter combinations, and the position of your dot towards the inner or outer edge of the circle shows how strongly you adhere to your section. They make it very clear though, that of course every person contains a little bit of all four; this is just your natural inclination. However, it did become eerily obvious just how accurate some of these descriptors were. I came up as a CD, with my dot right in between the inner and outer edge. This means that I am mostly conscientious, with a tendency to be dominant. Me all over. Now the reason why I thought I couldn’t be a leader, and something typical of the ‘C’ type, is that I really thrive on independent work, and (more often than I like to admit) I have problems letting others take on responsibility. For others who received the ‘S’ bracket, they tend to be accommodating to others and more indecisive; ‘i’ are sometimes quite impulsive and disorganised; ‘D’ can be impatient and insensitive towards group morale. So, none of us are perfect.

But in recognising these limitations and understanding our strengths, I think we all began to feel a lot more confident. Not just in being more aware of how we react in goal-orientated situations and how this affects the larger group, but in that we all had inherent qualities that are essential to leadership. I might need to work on being overly critical and sharing the workload, however I also have a meticulous emphasis on quality, love learning from others’ expertise, and have pretty good common sense. What I gained form the leadership weekend is perhaps the most important trait that a leader needs: self-awareness. I don’t know what made me more relieved; knowing that being a leader was something much more attainable than I imagined, or that I don’t have to practice my pointing anymore.

 

Image credits to the St Andrews image database system. The Disc Profile is a registered copyright or John Wiley & Sons 2012

President, Australasian Association for Logic; Chair of the Council, Australasian Association of Philosophy; Elected Life Member, Clare Hall, Cambridge… With more than 240 papers published and 6 books, the list of his achievements never seems to end. The distinguished Professor Graham Priest has had an impressive academic career, to say the least, but what differentiates him from most people is far from an impressive award, it is the example he sets, it is his natural and wise leadership that really makes him stand out and, ultimately, the reason why you are now reading a post on what he represents.

Graham priest is exactly the kind of person that defies the stereotype, held both outside and inside of academia, that a great academic cannot be a well-rounded person, that a man that is capable of producing research at the very edge of knowledge does not have the time to be well read in many other fields; that he cannot understand the complexities and intricacies of art if he has spent too long thinking about mathematical sciences or that he cannot possibly have the time to exercise on a regular basis or practice tai-chi. This common belief comes from the apparent fact that the cost of being a renowned expert must have been that you only had time to specialise in that one thing and nothing more. It partly comes from a western idea that developing the body antagonises the goal of developing the mind. And it comes from the thought that if that you, by any chance, have the highest academic goals, then you must give up all those other hobbies and interests that you enjoy and take up a good part of your day because they are a waste of time.

I think this is exactly the wrong way to approach life and that Graham Priest is a valuable leader because he sets a path for many to follow that illustrates how to go about getting rid of this dangerous stereotype. Graham Priest is a leader that inspires me on many fronts, the academic is only one of them. He clearly has achieved academic excellence, which I think is admirable in itself. But the kind of excellence that he brings to the table is uncommon. He is an integral academic, one that is not afraid to cross boundaries between subjects like mathematics, philosophy, politics, psychology and after graduating from a maths degree at Cambridge he went on to spend almost the rest of his life exploring all the sorts of philosophy areas one could think of. He dares not vow to the traditional canon of overspecialisation; instead, he takes initiative and links ideas together in a creative way. People have only recently started to realise the importance of interdisciplinary richness and how an unexpected piece of knowledge in one area might spark a brilliant idea in some other.

Priest challenges stereotypes, thinks outside the box, brings together fields that most people often categorise as completely separated and disjoint: mathematics and philosophy, eastern and western traditions, philosophy and martial arts… These are all examples of things he has combined as if they were not that different to begin with (they probably are not). Priest is a leader that shows originality and lives a congruent life, he has great influence through his work and yet he is never pretentious. His humbleness is one of his main virtues when we analyse why he is a great leader. Moreover, he leads a healthy life and remains approachable and friendly (which I know from my personal experience). As the pre-socratic philosopher Thales once said: “What man is happy? ‘He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind and a docile nature’.”[1] I suggest the reader one must learn from Thales, remember to never be content with just a resourceful mind and aspire to all three.

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My Laidlaw research has led me to work extensively with philosophy of mathematics, a field Graham Priest has led for several years. In particular, his two books In Contradiction and Non-Classical Introduction to Logic have been extremely useful in my research. He is someone I truly look up to but not just because of his intellectual achievements but because of who he is and how he lives his life. To me, that is exactly the kind of legacy that I look for in a good leader and not just an example of how to be good at one particular thing but an integral example of how to lead a superb life altogether.

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I would like to thank Lord Laidlaw and everyone that took part in this joint effort to make this scholarship happen. Overall, I think I have made really good progress and I feel fortunate to be learning so much through my research project and the leadership workshops.

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[1] As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius. Accessed from Perseus Digital Library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

[2] Graham Priest. Photo by Maureen Eckert. Accessed from http://grahampriest.net/

[3] Graham Priest by the North Sea in Scotland. Accessed from http://grahampriest.net/

I’ll start by introducing my research, but I don’t want to lose my good audience so I’ll keep it brief. I’m just over two weeks in and, despite some rough debugging, I have by now settled into a fairly comfortable tempo. I’ve been working with machine learning algorithms, the same kind of techniques used by the likes of Facebook and Google to target ads on the internet, and applying them to solve problems in physical chemistry. The hot topic of the day in machine learning is the deep neural network, which aims to mimic the way animals and people learn (in a much simplified way) to find patterns in vast amounts of data. The network is taught to recognise some particular feature in the data using a training algorithm.

If you think of the variables in the network as defining a landscape, with hills and valleys, then the algorithm learns by running downhill. It’s chasing after the lowest point, the so-called global minimum, where it has learned everything it possibly can from what it has been given. I picture the algorithm as a little hiker trying to find its way home, traversing a perilous path over towering mountains and gaping ravines. Every leap carries with it a risk that the numbers will suddenly explode away to infinity and the hiker will lose its way forever, but if it is too timid it can get stuck in the safety of a local minimum, lacking the courage to make the jump over the next hill. With every improvement added it’s almost heartwarming to see it develop into a confident navigator of this unpredictable terrain.That it can learn to replicate the complicated and often unintuitive results of quantum chemistry – with no guidance but the raw data – is a testament to its flexibility, and although it’s really a simple model I get a kick out of musing that it sheds light on the process of learning in general. I even wonder if there is not a (somewhat strained) comparison to leadership in there somewhere. One recurring theme in the leadership sessions seems to be that in order to improve as a leader you too must have the bravery to push yourself over obstacles when those around you might hesitate. It may be some great challenge in your work, or one as small as being the first to make a suggestion, and both can be daunting, but as you improve your techniques and add new tools to your repertoire the challenges that seemed frightening or insurmountable before can become familiar, even enjoyable.

 

I’ve really had a blast with this project so far and I’d like to thank Lord Laidlaw for making it possible as well as the CAPOD staff and speakers who run this fantastic scholarship. Your time and effort is well appreciated.

Frederick the Great was furious. It was 1747 and construction had just finished on Sanssouci, the Prussian King’s summer palace and personal retreat. The showpiece was to be a spectacular fountain capable of jetting water over thirty metres. Not a single drop ever rose above the basin. The pipes kept bursting under the enormous pressure and the costly project was abandoned. The man who Frederick blamed was Leonhard Euler, his “cyclops of a mathematician”. The disparaging sobriquet was a reference to Euler’s ailing sight, he would later go blind. “My mill was constructed mathematically, and it could not raise one drop of water…Vanity of Vanities! Vanity of mathematics!” Frederick later complained to Voltaire. In truth, Euler had warned the architects that the pipes were not thick enough and the project would fail should they go ahead. This advice seems never to have reached Frederick, or he chose to ignore it.

It’s hardly surprising that the two men failed to get along. Frederick was often seen as a bold and brilliant character, more an admirer of poetry and philosophy than the “sterile field” of mathematics. Euler, on the other hand, was an outwardly unremarkable man, not much interested in the flummery of court life. In the annals of history Frederick is by far the favoured subject, but to disregard Euler would be a mistake. He was not only the most prolific mathematician to ever live, many also regard him as the greatest. It was said that he “calculated without apparent effort, as men breathe, or as eagles sustain themselves in the wind”. Hardly any area of mathematics or physics remained unaffected by his work. At a young age he offered a solution for the Paris Academy’s annual Prize Problem, to determine the best placement of masts on a ship. Euler was born in landlocked Switzerland and had never seen a ship in person. He placed second, beaten by “the father of naval architecture”. Showing characteristic resolve, he went on to win the prize eleven more times. Such stories are typical of his extraordinary career.

[1]

Despite the animus between the pair, Euler and Frederick did have something in common. They were both, in very different ways, exceptional leaders. In the mind of the military historian, or the ambitious statesman, Frederick the Great was a model leader. He was decisive, courageous, and an expert tactician. In military campaigns he led personally and faced the enemy at the side of his men, having six horses shot from under him during battle. Napoleon admired Frederick so much that he had a bust of him made for his bedroom cabinet. Frederick personified the Romantic image of a great military leader, a man whose character and brilliance alone were enough to inspire devotion and confidence. Euler possessed none of these qualities. He never fielded an army, raised a nation to pre-eminence, or gained an honorific like ‘the great’. Nonetheless, Euler had ambitious designs and inspired others to seek their fulfilment. He did this not by command but by example, as was fitting for his battleground. Euler led mathematical science during his lifetime and paved new paths for future generations to follow.

If Frederick’s style of leadership was martial, Euler’s was intellectual. History has seen an abundance of leaders like Frederick and, regardless of what they bring about, demand hardly seems to wane. Recent trends, however, suggest a change in this situation. Already one is more likely to see the face of Austen, Smith, or Watt rather than Churchill when reaching for their wallet. Personally, this is a welcome shift in focus. They might not be good at leading armies, or getting fountains built, but the world could benefit from a few more leaders like Euler.

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I hadn’t thought much about leadership before becoming a Laidlaw Scholar, these reflections were prompted by some of the things I’ve learnt about leadership since then. I’d like to thank Lord Laidlaw for creating and sustaining this excellent program and the superb team supporting us at St Andrews.

[1] Left: Handmann, Jakob Emanuel, Portrait of Leonhard Euler, 1753, Kunstmuseum, Basel. Right: Camphausen, Wilhelm, Portrait of Frederick the Great, 1870. Both accessed from commons.wikimedia.org.

The bright Scottish sun taunts me from my glistening window pane, calling me to step out from the lonely cell I call my room into the salty embrace of the beach; the lush scents of Lade Braes; the cheekiness of a pint . . .

Diverging from a scheduled curriculum and jumping head first into undirected, independent research, above all, tests my will and self-motivation to do the research. I’m lucky enough to have my area of interest chosen for this amazing programme, and to have gotten a supervisor who is interested in my research topic who is also inspiring in his passion in his own field of research (Shoutout to Mr Duncan!). Alongside with the hard work and encouragement of the Laidlaw team, these factors help me to persist with my research on days where I feel monotonous and uninspired.

I think getting started with reading secondary materials (on theory) has been the most difficult part for me as I’m more excited over the conferences to attend and banned plays to read that can only be informed with theoretical knowledge. With the research topic of “How the Singapore theatre reflects and shapes the queer cultures in Singaporean society”, a good understanding of queer and theatre theories are pertinent, and so far, my reading on different theories and their nuances and implications have fascinated and captivated me. A wider knowledge pool of theory has made me even more excited to do hands-on research and inputting my analysis on the plays that I read and watch. I have the Queer Asia Conference in London that I am attending at the end of June, and this gives me the opportunity to hear from a large pool of experiences and knowledge that are specific to being Asian.

Beginning the journey into research through this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and with a supportive team that helps me to develop as a researcher, a leader, and as a person, is something that I would eternally be grateful for, and all I can do is hope that my contributions to the programme and society make an impact, no matter how small.