Topics:
The basics
Going on at length
The basics
In the text, terms that have an entry explaining them are colored Steel Blue. Clicking on them takes you to that entry's page. The term you just clicked on will be listed at the top of the page in Dark Violet. Clicking on it will take you to the first instance of that term on the page, although things will often make more sense if you read the whole page through from the beginning.
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Each term entry page starts out with the main term for that entry, in big type
, and right under that a list of the terms discussed. Clicking on any of these terms will take you to the first instance of it on the page, even though they're not colored differently from normal text. Underneath the list of terms is a list of topics discussed under this entry. Again, clicking on any of these takes you there.
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If a special term occurs on a term entry page and its part of the same entry, it will be colored Dark Green, and clicking on it will take you to the first instance of it on the page. Terms from another entry will be colored Steel Blue as usual.
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Going on at length
Okay.
This started out as a simple glossary to accompany and explain our Top Ten Questions. But as you can see, it got a lot bigger.
First of all, I started realizing that defining some of these terms was not so simple. That got me doing more research. Doing more research got me very interested in not ever having to do the same research again, so I got more interested in finding a way to capture as much as possible of the information I was coming across. And as long as I was capturing all this extra information, it seemed only right to put it out there so other people didn't have to do the same research. Hence the creation of the database and program that I created to generate this website.
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A brief story to illustrate my design of this glossary:
When I was taking my first programming course, I unintentionally found several undocumented ways to crash the computer we were using (that is, my homework assignment would crash the computer, and I didn't know why). This fouled things up for everyone in the course, and I was eventually hauled in for a private session with the TA, who lived for his computer.
TA: THIS... is the manual. (eyeing me with sudden suspicion) Do you read manuals?
(moment of attempted comprehension)
Me: Well... I have read manuals in the past...
TA: Okay, okay! Let me put it this way! Do you read novels?
Me: Sure! I read novels all the ..
TA: Then you DON'T read manuals!
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The point is, I know that most of you don't read manuals, so I have tried to make this as little like a manual as possible. In fact, for many of us, learning about mushrooms is in the realm of "personal knowledge", and I've tried to structure the site to support that as much as possible. Personal Knowledge is a term coined by Michael Polanyi (in his book of the same name) for types of expertise that are impossible to acquire from books, so they must be taught face to face. His flagship example was radiology, where you really need an experienced person pointing at all the little flecks and splotches on the X-ray picture and telling you what's what. The concept is not totally original with Polanyi (David Hume had a similar idea about learning aesthetics, for example; his main example was a wine-taster), but he gave it a nice term and definition.
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In any case, I have tried to make this glossary as much like a live session (and as little like a manual) as possible, with many pictures, and lots of me verbally pointing to the pictures and discussing them and chatting about them. The key to the species is necessarily a little more telegraphic, but I'm sure you can deal.
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Returning to my funny story, the TA's point in asking me whether I read manuals was to determine whether he had to point me towards the necessary information in the manual, or whether I could be trusted to just read the whole thing cover to cover and memorize it. It's not necessary to learn this glossary cover to cover, and I certainly don't expect it of anyone. There's a lot of information in here, much of it irrelevant to what you are interested in at the moment. Some of it is here because I use it for the keys; some is here because you may encounter it elsewhere and want to know what it means; some of it is here because I foolhardily decided to transcribe the de Bary (1887) glossary, and got a little ways into it before I realized that my brain was going dead and none of it was relevant anymore. If you want stuff to read for educational entertainment, I recommend the entry on fungal lifestyles or destroying angels; if you've had some experience with mycology (including some experience being confused by mycological terms), you might enjoy the entry on natural language. Besides that, a collection of good articles from our newsletter should be up soon, and that should keep you busy for quite a while.
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