Pissing On Every Lamp Post :
the paradox of scholarship
@29 March 2002If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants
[Isaac Newton, 1642 - 1727]Newton's comment encapsulates the ideal of scholarship, though not its constant outcome. Scholarship is often confused with the scientific methodologies which have transformed human civilizations over the last three centuries. In fact however, scientific methodology (as Newton recognized) is only effective when scholarship is its handmaiden, not its mistress.
Let us be explicit. Scholarship is that process of becoming familiar with, ordering, and acknowledging the thinking of earlier workers in a particular line of inquiry. It can easily become a lifetime task. The process is obviously valuable. Subduing the arrogance of an ignorant mind (especially one's own) is very healthy. Scholarship not only helps to avoid past mistakes and save the waste of "reinventing the wheel", but can also be a stimulus for new and more sophisticated ideas about a topic.
However, the largest body of scholarship always remains inert, not only failing to stimulate new ideas, but actually forming a bulwark against the intrusion of fresh thinking. This is true at both individual and institutional levels; (it is also one of the huge social costs extracted by mass education systems). In fact, in its historical form, the scholastic tradition is almost a synonym for the blind conservatism of belief which we associate with the European Middle Ages. Recall, for example, that this was the tradition which violently upheld the Ptolemaic (and Christian) view of the universe against overwhelming empirical evidence.
Has this inert-to-reactionary tendency of the scholastic tradition changed? By no means. The vast majority of academic publications, though they pass for scientific analysis, are firmly in the scholastic tradition of reiterating accepted belief while offering little new insight. When a phenomena is as persistent as this it can generally be traced to a pattern in human psychology - in this case the personality types which are most often attracted to a scholarly life.
The induction of novitiates into the scholarly process has naturally enough become a near monopoly of university academics; (fortunately, the democratized access to knowledge offered by mediums such as the Internet is weakening this monopoly). Often enough, those who have learned to obediently piss on every lamp post (i.e. learned to name a plethora of sources) are felt to have properly marked out a royal road of progress to a higher degree - an MA or Ph.D.. As a consequence, vast numbers of dissertations are little more than collections of acknowledged sources with some contrived and insignificant "experiment" or "analysis" tacked onto the end.
One of the stranger consequences of the scholastic process is that a lack of innovation is frequently disguised by a proliferation of sects. This is the face of revolution for an academic. In a modern university setting, these sects generally go by the name of "a new field of study". They are a primary vehicle for scholars to achieve "pioneer" status without actually inventing anything; (which is not to say of course that all new fields of study are career constructs). The early stages of such sects are marked by an urgent quest for respectability, and acceptance as a "science". There is the rapid accumulation of foundation great literature, and a hunt for validating antecedents. Hence we see much zealotry about quoting from every apparently supporting source, no matter how tenuous. Definitions multiply, and old words are given subtle new overtones in the argot of the freshly minted sect. Conversely, suggestions that the whole topic can be handled perfectly well by earlier study disciplines are hotly contested.
Well, the rather hollow sound an fury just described can easily confuse and overwhelm real science. Genuine scientific research employs most of the same mechanisms as scholastic activity, albeit with a quite different emphasis. The processes of hypothesis and systematic investigation, and above all the miracle of innovation which comes from serendipity, do need to be stimulated and buttressed by the insights of those who came before. This is where scholarly activity has a legitimate role to play. It is a supporting role, no less, but emphatically not the main game.
All opinions expressed in Thor's Unwise Ideas and The Passionate Skeptic are entirely those of the author, who has no aim to influence, proselytize or persuade others to a point of view. He is pleased if his writing generates reflection in readers, either for or against the sentiment of the argument.
"Pissing on every lamp post : the paradox of scholarship" © copyrighted to Thor May; all rights reserved 2000