Subject: Caesarian sections
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Mon Nov 26 2001 - 04:19:53 GMT
Whatever my genes may try to insist, my mind
is that of an Englishman. This explains why I shudder
away in horror at the word ‘intellectual’ – and all
its connotations (which include Frenchmen sitting around
in cafes gabbing about Foucault, student debaters,
leather-patched blokes in book-lined rooms, academics
& scholars of all types but ESPECIALLY American
women with ‘edu’ at the end of their e-addresses.)
It’s a matter of taste & snobbery, of course. But more
seriously, there seems to me to be a profound difference
between two kinds of scholarship: that of ‘the humanities’
& that of ‘science’.
In the latter, the worker is contributing in tiny or
huge ways (depending on his talents & his luck) to
an accumulation of knowledge which is subject to
endless examination, confirmation & correction.
That accumulation will go on growing, no matter what,
no matter how slowly. If Einstein isn’t born this year, OK.
Sooner or later, the principles of relativity will emerge
because they have been there all the time, just waiting
to be clarified. Not infrequently, great ideas have become
apparent to two or three great scientists around the same time
– simply because their time had come & because the work
of countless anonymous people had established their base.
But this is not true for the man who studies the arts or
history or philosophy or (even, I’d suggest) consciousness.
The power of statements in these disciplines depends
wholly on the persuasiveness of the individual making them.
There’s really no mechanism for testing or validating.
Take your pick: Aristotle or Leavis, Marx or Jesus, Raphael
or Disney, Beethoven or McCartney. Argue your piece
& you may or may not (depending on the current fashion)
find adherents. No one will be able to prove you wrong
– as they would if, for instance, you maintained the phlogiston
theory of combustion. The sad thing is that it doesn’t
really matter very much what you think. No aeroplane will
fall out of the sky because you've misunderstood the problem
of metal fatigue. No child will die because you’ve given him
the wrong intravenous fluids. All that’s at stake is the approval
of the next seminar or the next NY review or the bored silence
on the mailing list.
The finicky section man is a ludicrous figure since he seems
pompously to be asserting an authority where there can be
no authority. (I hope I understand just what is meant
by ‘section man’.) But I don’t see the ‘genuine’ scholar as any
less ludicrous. They’re both dealing, essentially, in their own
hot air. (Sez he at the end of 430 unnecessary words.)
Scottie B.
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