A part of me believes that academics fulfill the role of priests in ancient cultures. They have highly developed sophisticated incantations which are not intended to be meaningful but to build a facade of control and portray an illusion of almost prophetic insight to the general public.
Nearly every elitist subculture does this. Executives and management consultants have their own esoteric jargon.
To amuse myself during conference calls, I used to invent silly dance moves to correspond to their various phrases as if the boss was at a square dance calling out the next step. "Circle back," "Align," "Come to Jesus," and of course, "Synergize!"
There are shared cultural roots in monasticism in medieval Europe. The monasteries were keepers of books, learning and scholarship in the long interregnum after the fall of Rome and up to the Renaissance. Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna and the other ancient universities of Europe were founded early in the second millenium, and it was natural for them to take the monasteries as a template.
In Human culture, accepted ideas are tightly associated with social status. Unfortunately, in my experience, social status isn't highly correlated with awesome ideas. That's why low-status people (like myself) who thrive on seeing novel ideas be realized must quickly learn the art of 'managing upwards' (i.e. Making one's boss think it was their idea).
A pretty well-recognised truth. J.S. Mill on 19th century Britain, via Hans E. Jensen:
First, the universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church and business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "'venerable institutions'" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments" flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the university "hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they . .. [were] paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opinions," namely those of the "ruling powers of the state" (Mill 1981: 429: and 1988b: 350). Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore, well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were instrumental in perpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should achieve anything approaching success in potential attempts at throwing off their fetters.
The state devised a second educational strategy in order to prevent such a calamity from occurring. According to Mill, the "elementary schools for children of the working classes" were given the task of ensuring that the poor would continue to accept docilely their dismal station in life. It was very easy for the state to force the public schools to assume this role. It did so simply by failing malignantly to allocate sufficient funds for the operations of what Mill identified contemptuously as "places called schools" (Mill 1982: 200; emphasis in original). These places were therefore understaffed. Moreover, the few teachers who were actually employed were completely "unfit for their work."
Hans E. Jensen, "John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution". Review of Social Economy. Pages 491-507. Published online: 05 Nov 2010.
The elephant in the room is that humanities have zero predictive power. And reaction to unexpected results is markedly different, too. If the eclipse did not happen exactly as predicted, hard sciences would (mostly) excitedly scramble to understand how and why. If Trump gets elected...you get stuff like this article "oh my what kind of person we are in this Trump era".
Author seems to disagree with you - he basically says humanities should provide better input to political discourse.
Also, it's the author that started using comparisons with hard sciences. In this context I have used the "elephant in the room", something to be aware of, not necessarily to optimize for.
Descriptive science is equally important as predictive science, but either way, science is not our only tool for knowledge. Statistical predictive models do happen to be in vogue, though.
The point of mathematical models is to be predictive. But I wouldn't call prediction "the whole point of science". That's reducing science to a means-to-an-end.
I think science is more commonly understood to be about discovery and exploration? Although it is commonly applied and turned into engineering, expansion of knowledge is still an end in itself.
Ever heard about Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle"? The purpose was to collect specimens and chart coasts -- purely descriptive. Even the idea of predictive natural science was a little awkward in the face of the religious concept that God created the world as-is/will-be.
There are generally accepted scientific theories that have zero predictive power. The theory of evolution is a great explanation of how we got here. But it can't predict what's next.
That's not true at all. Yes, you can say that the theory of evolution can't predict what man will be like in the year One Million or other pop culture ideas of how evolution works, but you can make the same claim about physics -- you can't predict what a given particle will be doing then either.
But there is lots of predictive power in evolutionary theory. The core of modern evolutionary theory is population genetics which is as mathematical as physics and can make predictions of whether certain alleles will increase or decrease in a population, for example.
All scientific theories should have predictive powers, otherwise they wouldn't be falsifiable, and, as such, not science.
Sometimes, as with your example, it's less obvious, but say, if a new species is discovered, evolution predicts there will be genetic differences to its closest cousin or ancestor and that the differences will be related to its fitness to thrive within a particular environment.
Also note that "predictive" doesn't need to be about future events. It can also mean new discoveries within existing records (like a feathered dinosaur).
Of course it can. We can apply selective pressure to a population and hypothesise the likely outcome. You can do this on a small scale in a Petri dish by selecting for antibiotic resistance, for example. And then you can validate the hypothesis by sequencing to determine the exact genetic change which led to the outcome.
If you wanted to predict the future evolution of a more complex species, that would be harder. Because we don't yet know what the selective pressures in the future will be, and the timescales involved are much longer. But if you define a set of selection criteria you can absolutely test a hypothesis by applying them today.
Arts are not meant to have predictive power. Sciences should have predictive power. The study of literature and music is the study of art. If psychology or sociology currently have little predictive power, they should be called arts instead of sciences. Falsifiability is the corner stone of science.
At least one reason to study humanities is to study philosophy of science, and understand how new and insufficient an idea like "science must have predictive power" is.
The humanities, or rather, the Liberal Arts from which they originate, are not about predictive power as such.
Rather, they're about information processing, and sets of useful priors.
The fundaments of the seven Liberal Arts are the trivium and the quadrivium. (Trivium => trivial, by the way.)
The three elemnts of the trivium are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Or, to put that in an information-technology / information-theoretic frame: input, processing, and output.
The four elements of the quadrivium are arithmetic, trigonometry, music, and astronomy (or astrology). Or: quantity, quantity in space, quantity in time, and quantity in space and time. Possibly an early development of systems dynamics.
I'm not arguing that present humanities have strayed far from these roots, or that they're not exceptionally incenstuous and inward-focused. They have and they are.
But your critique that they are not of themselves predictive has been launched at the wrong target. You misunderstand the domain. (Don't feel bad, many do, and I've only recently realised the error myself.)
I'm going to be snobby. There is a vast VAST difference between the humanities and social sciences and natural sciences with jargon use. There are a shitload of things no one ever talks about that need a name. Jargon in natural science is used to speak precisely, but in social science it's invariably used to speak in general terms. In human geography the words "place" and "space" for example are quite maddening to a scientist.
In natural science words aren't made up to replace simpler common words about phenomena most people are aware of. Instead the names for the most part are very specifically systematic and precise especially in Chemistry. So from a composite name like "hydrogen dioxide" and "carbon dioxide" you get an idea of similarity. If everyone spoke about "water" and other dioxides, it's actually less obvious you're only talking about dioxides.
The worst offenders in natural science are for sure people who work in taxonomy and phylogenetics. They still demand that everyone understand Latin and use really ridiculous names for most species. It took me two years to realise all the things with "carteri" in the name wasn't something meaningful. It just meant "Carter's", who was the victorian mutton-chop-rocking guy who discovered them. But the naming of species isn't very systematic in general, and is frequently whimsical.
A fun example is "Selenochlamys ysbryd" one of the only species to be designated with a Welsh-Latin fusion name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_slug#Etymology I like that they got away with it, but I doubt anyone got from "ysbryda" the slug would look "ghostly". I can't even argue with the use of latin, there is too much stuff to name in just english without it becoming incredibly confusing. There's only so many ways you can say "brown beetle".
> So from a composite name like "hydrogen dioxide" and "carbon dioxide" you get an idea of similarity. If everyone spoke about "water" and other dioxides...
Er... I generally agree with what you're saying, but water is not hydrogen dioxide, it's dihydrogen monoxide. It's most definitely not similar to carbon dioxide :)
Hah! See this is why it should be just "water" OMG. Ok so dinitrogen monoxide :P which also has a common name related to how I feel right now. I just woke up gimme a break :'( It's almost certainly not obvious using "water" and "laughing gas" the two have something in common.
If you think species names are whimsical, wait until you see the list of Drosophila (fruit fly) gene names.
edit: I am not sure species names should be systematical either, as long as they are differently named. Molecules up to a certain complexity can be named by their formula. Species have far greater complexity yet.
You needn't look too far within the realm of social sciences to find jargon being used to convey precise nuance:
liberal democracy versus illiberal democracy
majoritarian electoral system versus a consociational electoral system
Complain all you want about the comparative politics branch of political science being descriptive, but its qualitative analysis does offer a useful framework for reasoning with the world and its outcomes.
The frustrating thing about political jargon is that some folks intentionally twist the meanings. The meanings shift much faster in that field than others.
I can't speak for the natural sciences, but I'm an academic in an engineering department at a major university in the UK. My main criticism of the article is that it sort of lets non-humanities off the hook.
I've been sat in seminars in my group (on computer science or engineering topics) and had the same feelings as the author. People invent jargon to describe simple ideas and then convince themselves that it's more precise when it rarely is or, when it is precise, the precision isn't necessary. All it ends up doing is reducing the impact of the research. But it does help with the imposter syndrome of being an early-career academic – everyone else is using all this complicated jargon and you feel a bit like a fraud, so you need to get to grips with it quickly.
This isn't a problem unique to academia though it might be more severe there. There's a section on the gov.uk's 'Writing for GOV.UK' [1] article that I like:
"Government experts often say that because they’re writing technical or complex
content for a specialist audience, they don’t need to use plain English. This is wrong.
Research [2] shows that higher literacy people prefer plain English because it
allows them to understand the information as quickly as possible.
For example, research [3] into use of specialist legal language in legal documents found:
- 80% of people preferred sentences written in clear English - and the more complex the issue, the greater that preference (eg, 97% preferred ‘among other things’ over the Latin ‘inter alia’)
- the more educated the person and the more specialist their knowledge, the greater their preference for plain English"
But jargon isn't limited to academia. Cults have their own languages, so do cultural scenes, so do generations. (Ask a teenager for details.)
So do businesses, start-ups, VCs, and so on.
IMO the original article doesn't go far enough. These jargon systems are identity markers. They're primarily intended to manage status, identify insiders, and exclude outsiders.
Arguably most academic and technical systems are designed to do this - including software. There's an argument that sometimes systems are unconsciously designed to be obscure and hard to use (e.g. Unix) for tribal reasons, not because they're a good practical solution to a given problem.
That aside, you can excuse jargon in science because it's actually useful. E.g. You won't get far trying to explain cellular biology by pointing at things and saying "This bit here. No, not that bit. This bit."
It's less useful in the humanities, because the philosophical and academic content in the modern humanities is as much an identity marker as the jargon is.
It's not there to provide creative insight or to wield political power. (It doesn't score high on either count.) It's there to provide evidence of tribal membership.
Clearly, if academics then decide they want to talk to the public, they immediately have a problem, because you can't talk to the public using thought and language systems that are designed to exclude the public.
This is the first piece I've seen by an academic that understands this.
> Clearly, if academics then decide they want to talk to the public, they immediately have a problem, because you can't talk to the public using thought and language systems that are designed to exclude the public.
> This is the first piece I've seen by an academic that understands this.
Understanding of this is implicit in every book an academic writes for a general audience.
There's obviously some middle ground between self-aggrandizing jargon and Up-Goer Five [1]. I think most disciplines will come to the necessary jargon over time, just as "plain English" comes to the necessary words. But it will always be a messy process.
People will prefer plain language - as someone famous whose name eludes me at this point said, if you can't explain something to a grade schooler (or something to that effect), you don't understand the problem. But if you know your field, and if your audience knows your field, I'd argue that you can convey ideas more rapidly, and more accurately than if you were using plain english.
It's like using strings when a more specific, constrained type would provide more type safety I guess.
But there is still a real reason to have defined names for species, even if the names seem whimsical (and the Latin isn't to be obscure -- it was the common language of science for centuries -- Newton and Linnaeus wrote in Latin, for example).
> They still demand that everyone understand Latin and use really ridiculous names for most species
Well, the thing is you do need vaguely universal names for species, and when taxonomy and phylogenetics really started Latin was the universal language used for science. Maybe if Linnaeus had been born a century later, species would have French names instead. But Latin is nice because it's not related to any single nation anymore.
But having a single universal reference name for all species, even if some of them are not intrinsically meaningful (but many are, mind you), is far better than every language having its own name for different things and no universal way to mention anything. Just try to talk about penguins or moths to French-speaking people, or explain the difference between goëlands and mouettes to English-speaking people, and you will quickly see the limits of vernacular names.
Species names are not systematic because species are not systematic. The most common definition is reproductive compatibility but that is so complex it's effectively random. Almost identical organisms could consistently fail to produce fully working offspring yet the hybrid of two completely different strains of terran life could theoretically luck into a reproducing cell pattern. For less esotheric examples for the limitations of the species concept look no further than "ring species". Species are not discrete points, they are a continuum that just happens to have a lot of gaps between many of the populated (surviving) areas. Species names are effectively GUIDs, that sometimes encode a bit of proximity assumptions (which may or may not be true). The traditional method of designating those GUIDs (some descriptive plays with a dead language, often namespaced to origin and/or the person who did the first description) surely isn't less mnemonic than other GUID patterns that could have been used instead.
The physical sciences seem to have particularly solid definitions because we've become so acculturated to them. In truth, though, the terms used borrow heavily from elsewhere, often social or cultural contexts, quite frequently prosaic ones.
Nothing like seeing college classmates get PHDs and then apparently spend substantial amounts of time telling "conservatives" and Trump supporters to STFU and f-off on Facebook comment threads.
>There’s a huge difference, for instance, between defending academic jargon as such and defending academic jargon as the typical academic so often uses it. There’s likewise a huge difference between justifying jargon when it is absolutely necessary (when all other available terms simply do not account for the depth or specificity of the thing you’re addressing) and pretending that jargon is always justified when academics use it. And there’s a huge difference between jargon as a necessarily difficult tool required for the academic work of tackling difficult concepts, and jargon as something used by tools simply to prove they’re academics.
What I find so amusing about this paragraph is that the word "jargon" is, in this context, jargon. It is not explained when jargon is necessary, or when it isn't, or what kinds of discussions would make it necessary. In fact, it is probably ideal to be familiar with the use of some sort of jargon, and with contexts in which it is necessary and unnecessary, in order to really make sense of what the author means here.
And something important got left out, which is: jargon is often easy. Easy like reaching into the bag of chocolate-peanut clusters rather than making some actual food. Jargon has two primary functions: it increases the number of things you can talk about specifically and it removes the emotional impact of talking about those things. The cognitive-somatic empathy impact of "blunt trauma to the genital region" is less wince-inducing than "kick in the nuts". Using jargon puts a Latinate wall between you and any difficult emotions that you might have about the subject that you're discussing.
But there is another purpose of jargon, too, in which it comes closer to that other famous tool of the academic, the formalism. Language is fluid and the meaning of words changes, but in order for the academic canon to remain useful for centuries, it has to stay somewhat the same. Jargon is supposed to fulfill the need for language that doesn't change. That's why, when academic jargon like "microaggression" -- a term which has appeared in papers since 1989 ( https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/3424662/Micr... ) -- becomes common in social parlance, it also stops being jargon, because it is no longer tied to its original meaning. To be brief (and somewhat wrong) jargon tries to be prescriptive, whereas real language is descriptive. And because language which is no longer jargon cannot be correctly used as though it were, having fluency in an academic field does not imply being able to communicate with ordinary people about it. In order to have conversations in colloquial language you have to learn to use colloquial language, which is a separate skill-set from what the academic is expected by their job title to accomplish.
So if you try to fix this communication problem by turning the jargon switch on and off:
>It goes without saying we are implicitly celebrating a kind of technocratic anti-politics, though, when we contribute to making the discussion of politics intelligible only to a select few. If Trump’s election didn’t teach us that this kind of thing is a death wish, nothing will.
well, maybe you should be beaten over the head with a copy of On Certainty.
Is the discussion intelligible only to a select few? No, if it were, it would be physics, and there are very few popular conspiracy theories about physics. Except for that one funded by billionaires, but that's a different problem. There are lots of popular conspiracy theories about sociology, and that's because it isn't that they hear ...
I find it almost incredible that while the motivated autodidact can learn almost any theoretical topic for almost no money via the internet we simultaneously have millions of students getting into heavy debt at university. (Also into heavy drinking, exam pressure, mental illness, radical indoctrination, etc.)
There's a difference between learning a topic yourself and learning it at a university: the university gives you a certificate at the end to say you did it, which other people recognise as having value.
There are also things that you gain by studying and working with others: discussion, exposure to different perspectives and points of view. Inspiration by experts in the field. These all have value. Whether they are worth the cost is a separate question.
Heavy drinking and radical indoctrination are optional; you can skip all that. Exam and other pressure from deadlines can be bad, but it can also be a powerful motivator to pull your finger out and get stuff done.
Sure. But bear in mind that all these benefits existed in the 60s, 70s and 80s, before the higher education bubble. When there was no web and little or no student debt. Yet there are more people in higher education now.
Heavy drinking and radical indoctrination are optional
They're notionally optional but don't underestimate the effects of social pressure.
In fact, conformity prevails strongly on the academic as well as the social side of university life. People talk about discussion and perspectives but in practice they want and expect accredited professionals to conform and to believe the same things. We don't generally want our doctors, for instance, to be original and creative. (Whereas, by contrast, we can have real discussion here.)
Students want to know whether a given topic will be in the exam or not, and what the right answer is. In the arts/humanities, where fashions tend to prevail, they try hard to give approved answers in original or disguised form. I suppose this isn't surprising, historically speaking. The first universities were religious institutions founded to train priests, to inculcate doctrinal uniformity, stamp out heresies, and so on.
If we judge the rationality of institutions by whether they meet the problems they purport to address then by that standard universities are pretty irrational. In fact I think one of the main functions they serve isn't mentioned very much: getting the kids to leave home.
>There are also things that you gain by studying and working with others: discussion, exposure to different perspectives and points of view. Inspiration by experts in the field.
These are all available on the internet for free as well, perhaps more so than in a university setting.
I think you will find that motivated autodidacts are (and have always been) rather thin on the ground. The internet has had less effect than the idea of a public library.
What do we expect of humanities academics? Keeping in mind that even if you make to tenure, you might have a $70-90K job in urban places where you cannot afford to own a house. Indeed, the failure rate of getting tenure or to full professor is very high: academia is much like a startup in this regard, you can work for a decade and if you don't get traction... you're no longer a market participant.
...
This article reads like someone starting a career who is musing about the stereotypes and flaws he presumes exist in his chosen profession and how his career relates to the broader world. Is Maximillian asking that that academics, especially those in the humanities, participate more in the political world? Surely, this is a double-edged sword: as soon as they present their ideas and knowledge forcefully in a political setting based upon their study of history, they are labeled as political. Can you be an effective advocate for change if you are labeled political?
So, what do we ask humanities professors do?
Outreach. Acedemics give talks at museums or libraries; they and help curators with fixing incorrect labels. They do their very best to wrap their hard-won knowledge in accessible terms. They write beautiful, amazing books that inspire people and spread ideas. But frankly, not everyone has an idea or insight that's generally applicable and worthy enough to have general public visibility.
Service. Acedemics often have part time jobs doing all sorts of service roles such as assisting undergraduates with their careers, participating in a broader administrative organization called a University, incrementally advancing their field, doing peer review, and the like. This takes time, because working with people and ideas takes time.
Research. We ask academics to be fountains of knowledge in their tiny itty-bitty field, to know each other in their field, and to maintain and advance the state of understanding. This means constant reading of what almost everyone in their field writes. They might even coalesce thought in the field, condense knowledge, and express this clearly to specialists and non-specialists alike.
Education. We expect academics to teach, and teach well. For the most part, in humanities, we expect them to use their field as an example play ground for students to learn to think deeply, reason about problems, express themselves logically and coherently, etc. This is challenging work, especially when so many students come to college ill-prepared with basic problems in thought formulation and expression. Yet, they do it. What warms an academics heart is when they get a letter, some 2-3 years or 10 years later where someone says: "you helped me learn to me think, and that has made all the difference in my life".
Do all academics do all of these perfectly? Probably not. However, for a high (or even medium) double-digit salary for a life's dedication to a field and education, what do we expect them to be? superheros?
I feel a lot of the purpose of jargon in academia is simply to avoid disagreements. It's easy to agree with a metaphor, because you can interpret it however you like.
Behold the quintessential modern literary / humanities intellectual in all its glory. A pretentiously long and drawn out article about mistrust of academia. And at no point does he talk about the possibilities that some or all humanities academics' work could be based on false or unrealistic premises; or contain deductions based on faulty reasoning; or the work makes no unfalsifiable conjectures yet the academic still claims to have expertise. It seems the last thing this guy will ever attempt is making a falsifiable prediction by using his mountains and mountains of theory. Nope, just add more theory and hope you fool people with the BS!
The problem is an inability to synthesize knowledge from outside disciplines. The piece itself is proof. No consideration of the economic factors or sociological factors at play. Just inward focus and self examination unaided by the very applicable knowledge provided by other domains of study.
I strongly suspect this will all prove to be a self correcting problem. The solution may be closer than many realize.
"Then, halfway through the panel, it hits me: this is awful. The redeeming insights are just so few and far between, stranded between deserts of lame, forced conference humor and straightforward, even banal points dressed up in comically unnecessary jargon."
Welcome to the land of adulthood, where everything is like this.
There's an old joke about the American hiker in Japan going to the inn in a small village in the evening and asking for a room. The innkeeper says in Japanese, "you wouldn't like it here, we have Japanese bathrooms." The hiker replies in Japanese that he has been in Japan for months and would be fine. They go back and forth a couple of times until the hiker in frustration says, in English, "Why can't I just get a place to sleep?" The innkeeper replies, "Because you don't speak Japanese," and slams the door.
Anyway, this kind of behavior is everywhere, especially in any field that does not look difficult. Yes, I have a PhD in computer science. No, I don't fix PCs all day.
The bottom line is that the author is part of the problem. The article is excessively erudite and verbose. He's clearly not talking to anyone outside of his field. He misrepresents the state of the "other side" to make points. (Quick, call up the ghost of William F. Buckley and ask him about the state of the American right.) And he is not saying anything new.
62 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadEdit: This is not facetious. YMMV, but many share this sentiment.
To amuse myself during conference calls, I used to invent silly dance moves to correspond to their various phrases as if the boss was at a square dance calling out the next step. "Circle back," "Align," "Come to Jesus," and of course, "Synergize!"
(Specifics and the ultimate impact are left as an exercise to the reader.)
First, the universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church and business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "'venerable institutions'" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments" flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the university "hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they . .. [were] paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opinions," namely those of the "ruling powers of the state" (Mill 1981: 429: and 1988b: 350). Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore, well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were instrumental in perpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should achieve anything approaching success in potential attempts at throwing off their fetters.
The state devised a second educational strategy in order to prevent such a calamity from occurring. According to Mill, the "elementary schools for children of the working classes" were given the task of ensuring that the poor would continue to accept docilely their dismal station in life. It was very easy for the state to force the public schools to assume this role. It did so simply by failing malignantly to allocate sufficient funds for the operations of what Mill identified contemptuously as "places called schools" (Mill 1982: 200; emphasis in original). These places were therefore understaffed. Moreover, the few teachers who were actually employed were completely "unfit for their work."
Hans E. Jensen, "John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution". Review of Social Economy. Pages 491-507. Published online: 05 Nov 2010.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599
You seem to presume predictive power is the preeminent criterion — the only thing worth optimizing for.
Also, it's the author that started using comparisons with hard sciences. In this context I have used the "elephant in the room", something to be aware of, not necessarily to optimize for.
The whole point of science is for it to be predictive though. Calling "descriptive science" (whatever that is) a science is sort of... wrong!
I think science is more commonly understood to be about discovery and exploration? Although it is commonly applied and turned into engineering, expansion of knowledge is still an end in itself.
But there is lots of predictive power in evolutionary theory. The core of modern evolutionary theory is population genetics which is as mathematical as physics and can make predictions of whether certain alleles will increase or decrease in a population, for example.
Sometimes, as with your example, it's less obvious, but say, if a new species is discovered, evolution predicts there will be genetic differences to its closest cousin or ancestor and that the differences will be related to its fitness to thrive within a particular environment.
Also note that "predictive" doesn't need to be about future events. It can also mean new discoveries within existing records (like a feathered dinosaur).
If you wanted to predict the future evolution of a more complex species, that would be harder. Because we don't yet know what the selective pressures in the future will be, and the timescales involved are much longer. But if you define a set of selection criteria you can absolutely test a hypothesis by applying them today.
Are they meant to? I don't read Tolstoy or play the piano because I think it will enable me to predict the future.
An absolute statement. Do you really think it's true?
Are you really saying you can gain no predictive power by studying history? Ethics? Sociology?
> If Trump gets elected...you get stuff like this article "oh my what kind of person we are in this Trump era".
Science did a great job predicting Trump would be elected.
Rather, they're about information processing, and sets of useful priors.
The fundaments of the seven Liberal Arts are the trivium and the quadrivium. (Trivium => trivial, by the way.)
The three elemnts of the trivium are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Or, to put that in an information-technology / information-theoretic frame: input, processing, and output.
The four elements of the quadrivium are arithmetic, trigonometry, music, and astronomy (or astrology). Or: quantity, quantity in space, quantity in time, and quantity in space and time. Possibly an early development of systems dynamics.
I'm not arguing that present humanities have strayed far from these roots, or that they're not exceptionally incenstuous and inward-focused. They have and they are.
But your critique that they are not of themselves predictive has been launched at the wrong target. You misunderstand the domain. (Don't feel bad, many do, and I've only recently realised the error myself.)
More: https://redd.it/6x7u6a
In natural science words aren't made up to replace simpler common words about phenomena most people are aware of. Instead the names for the most part are very specifically systematic and precise especially in Chemistry. So from a composite name like "hydrogen dioxide" and "carbon dioxide" you get an idea of similarity. If everyone spoke about "water" and other dioxides, it's actually less obvious you're only talking about dioxides.
The worst offenders in natural science are for sure people who work in taxonomy and phylogenetics. They still demand that everyone understand Latin and use really ridiculous names for most species. It took me two years to realise all the things with "carteri" in the name wasn't something meaningful. It just meant "Carter's", who was the victorian mutton-chop-rocking guy who discovered them. But the naming of species isn't very systematic in general, and is frequently whimsical.
A fun example is "Selenochlamys ysbryd" one of the only species to be designated with a Welsh-Latin fusion name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_slug#Etymology I like that they got away with it, but I doubt anyone got from "ysbryda" the slug would look "ghostly". I can't even argue with the use of latin, there is too much stuff to name in just english without it becoming incredibly confusing. There's only so many ways you can say "brown beetle".
Er... I generally agree with what you're saying, but water is not hydrogen dioxide, it's dihydrogen monoxide. It's most definitely not similar to carbon dioxide :)
liberal democracy versus illiberal democracy
majoritarian electoral system versus a consociational electoral system
Complain all you want about the comparative politics branch of political science being descriptive, but its qualitative analysis does offer a useful framework for reasoning with the world and its outcomes.
I've been sat in seminars in my group (on computer science or engineering topics) and had the same feelings as the author. People invent jargon to describe simple ideas and then convince themselves that it's more precise when it rarely is or, when it is precise, the precision isn't necessary. All it ends up doing is reducing the impact of the research. But it does help with the imposter syndrome of being an early-career academic – everyone else is using all this complicated jargon and you feel a bit like a fraud, so you need to get to grips with it quickly.
This isn't a problem unique to academia though it might be more severe there. There's a section on the gov.uk's 'Writing for GOV.UK' [1] article that I like:
"Government experts often say that because they’re writing technical or complex content for a specialist audience, they don’t need to use plain English. This is wrong.
Research [2] shows that higher literacy people prefer plain English because it allows them to understand the information as quickly as possible.
For example, research [3] into use of specialist legal language in legal documents found:
- 80% of people preferred sentences written in clear English - and the more complex the issue, the greater that preference (eg, 97% preferred ‘among other things’ over the Latin ‘inter alia’)
- the more educated the person and the more specialist their knowledge, the greater their preference for plain English"
[1]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u...
[2]: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2014/02/17/guest-post-clarity-is-kin...
[3]: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&co...
But jargon isn't limited to academia. Cults have their own languages, so do cultural scenes, so do generations. (Ask a teenager for details.)
So do businesses, start-ups, VCs, and so on.
IMO the original article doesn't go far enough. These jargon systems are identity markers. They're primarily intended to manage status, identify insiders, and exclude outsiders.
Arguably most academic and technical systems are designed to do this - including software. There's an argument that sometimes systems are unconsciously designed to be obscure and hard to use (e.g. Unix) for tribal reasons, not because they're a good practical solution to a given problem.
That aside, you can excuse jargon in science because it's actually useful. E.g. You won't get far trying to explain cellular biology by pointing at things and saying "This bit here. No, not that bit. This bit."
It's less useful in the humanities, because the philosophical and academic content in the modern humanities is as much an identity marker as the jargon is.
It's not there to provide creative insight or to wield political power. (It doesn't score high on either count.) It's there to provide evidence of tribal membership.
Clearly, if academics then decide they want to talk to the public, they immediately have a problem, because you can't talk to the public using thought and language systems that are designed to exclude the public.
This is the first piece I've seen by an academic that understands this.
> This is the first piece I've seen by an academic that understands this.
Understanding of this is implicit in every book an academic writes for a general audience.
[1]: https://xkcd.com/1133/
It's like using strings when a more specific, constrained type would provide more type safety I guess.
Well, the thing is you do need vaguely universal names for species, and when taxonomy and phylogenetics really started Latin was the universal language used for science. Maybe if Linnaeus had been born a century later, species would have French names instead. But Latin is nice because it's not related to any single nation anymore.
But having a single universal reference name for all species, even if some of them are not intrinsically meaningful (but many are, mind you), is far better than every language having its own name for different things and no universal way to mention anything. Just try to talk about penguins or moths to French-speaking people, or explain the difference between goëlands and mouettes to English-speaking people, and you will quickly see the limits of vernacular names.
As one example, the ability to breed is not always transitive.[1]
Are A, B, C the same species?[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
Vector: one who carries http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=vector&allowed_in_f...
Force: conquor by violence http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
Gravity: thoughtfulness, seriousness http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
Speed: to thrive or prosper http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=speed&allowed_in_fr...
Mass: barley cake http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mass&allowed_in_fra...
Temperature: to restrain oneself http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=temperature&allowed...
Energy: activity, action, operation http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=energy&allowed_in_f...
Atom: a cutting. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=atom&allowed_in_fra...
Electron: amber http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=electric&allowed_in...
Ion: to go http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ion&allowed_in_fram...
Cathode, anode: a way up / down http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cathode&allowed_in_... http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=anode&allowed_in_fr...
Valance: drapery http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
And I won't even both with "charm", "strangeness", "flavour", "spin", "top", and "bottom", all referencing properties of subatomic particles.
What I find so amusing about this paragraph is that the word "jargon" is, in this context, jargon. It is not explained when jargon is necessary, or when it isn't, or what kinds of discussions would make it necessary. In fact, it is probably ideal to be familiar with the use of some sort of jargon, and with contexts in which it is necessary and unnecessary, in order to really make sense of what the author means here.
And something important got left out, which is: jargon is often easy. Easy like reaching into the bag of chocolate-peanut clusters rather than making some actual food. Jargon has two primary functions: it increases the number of things you can talk about specifically and it removes the emotional impact of talking about those things. The cognitive-somatic empathy impact of "blunt trauma to the genital region" is less wince-inducing than "kick in the nuts". Using jargon puts a Latinate wall between you and any difficult emotions that you might have about the subject that you're discussing.
But there is another purpose of jargon, too, in which it comes closer to that other famous tool of the academic, the formalism. Language is fluid and the meaning of words changes, but in order for the academic canon to remain useful for centuries, it has to stay somewhat the same. Jargon is supposed to fulfill the need for language that doesn't change. That's why, when academic jargon like "microaggression" -- a term which has appeared in papers since 1989 ( https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/3424662/Micr... ) -- becomes common in social parlance, it also stops being jargon, because it is no longer tied to its original meaning. To be brief (and somewhat wrong) jargon tries to be prescriptive, whereas real language is descriptive. And because language which is no longer jargon cannot be correctly used as though it were, having fluency in an academic field does not imply being able to communicate with ordinary people about it. In order to have conversations in colloquial language you have to learn to use colloquial language, which is a separate skill-set from what the academic is expected by their job title to accomplish.
So if you try to fix this communication problem by turning the jargon switch on and off:
>It goes without saying we are implicitly celebrating a kind of technocratic anti-politics, though, when we contribute to making the discussion of politics intelligible only to a select few. If Trump’s election didn’t teach us that this kind of thing is a death wish, nothing will.
well, maybe you should be beaten over the head with a copy of On Certainty.
Is the discussion intelligible only to a select few? No, if it were, it would be physics, and there are very few popular conspiracy theories about physics. Except for that one funded by billionaires, but that's a different problem. There are lots of popular conspiracy theories about sociology, and that's because it isn't that they hear ...
There are also things that you gain by studying and working with others: discussion, exposure to different perspectives and points of view. Inspiration by experts in the field. These all have value. Whether they are worth the cost is a separate question.
Heavy drinking and radical indoctrination are optional; you can skip all that. Exam and other pressure from deadlines can be bad, but it can also be a powerful motivator to pull your finger out and get stuff done.
Heavy drinking and radical indoctrination are optional
They're notionally optional but don't underestimate the effects of social pressure.
In fact, conformity prevails strongly on the academic as well as the social side of university life. People talk about discussion and perspectives but in practice they want and expect accredited professionals to conform and to believe the same things. We don't generally want our doctors, for instance, to be original and creative. (Whereas, by contrast, we can have real discussion here.)
Students want to know whether a given topic will be in the exam or not, and what the right answer is. In the arts/humanities, where fashions tend to prevail, they try hard to give approved answers in original or disguised form. I suppose this isn't surprising, historically speaking. The first universities were religious institutions founded to train priests, to inculcate doctrinal uniformity, stamp out heresies, and so on.
If we judge the rationality of institutions by whether they meet the problems they purport to address then by that standard universities are pretty irrational. In fact I think one of the main functions they serve isn't mentioned very much: getting the kids to leave home.
These are all available on the internet for free as well, perhaps more so than in a university setting.
...
This article reads like someone starting a career who is musing about the stereotypes and flaws he presumes exist in his chosen profession and how his career relates to the broader world. Is Maximillian asking that that academics, especially those in the humanities, participate more in the political world? Surely, this is a double-edged sword: as soon as they present their ideas and knowledge forcefully in a political setting based upon their study of history, they are labeled as political. Can you be an effective advocate for change if you are labeled political?
So, what do we ask humanities professors do?
Outreach. Acedemics give talks at museums or libraries; they and help curators with fixing incorrect labels. They do their very best to wrap their hard-won knowledge in accessible terms. They write beautiful, amazing books that inspire people and spread ideas. But frankly, not everyone has an idea or insight that's generally applicable and worthy enough to have general public visibility.
Service. Acedemics often have part time jobs doing all sorts of service roles such as assisting undergraduates with their careers, participating in a broader administrative organization called a University, incrementally advancing their field, doing peer review, and the like. This takes time, because working with people and ideas takes time.
Research. We ask academics to be fountains of knowledge in their tiny itty-bitty field, to know each other in their field, and to maintain and advance the state of understanding. This means constant reading of what almost everyone in their field writes. They might even coalesce thought in the field, condense knowledge, and express this clearly to specialists and non-specialists alike.
Education. We expect academics to teach, and teach well. For the most part, in humanities, we expect them to use their field as an example play ground for students to learn to think deeply, reason about problems, express themselves logically and coherently, etc. This is challenging work, especially when so many students come to college ill-prepared with basic problems in thought formulation and expression. Yet, they do it. What warms an academics heart is when they get a letter, some 2-3 years or 10 years later where someone says: "you helped me learn to me think, and that has made all the difference in my life".
Do all academics do all of these perfectly? Probably not. However, for a high (or even medium) double-digit salary for a life's dedication to a field and education, what do we expect them to be? superheros?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I strongly suspect this will all prove to be a self correcting problem. The solution may be closer than many realize.
Welcome to the land of adulthood, where everything is like this.
There's an old joke about the American hiker in Japan going to the inn in a small village in the evening and asking for a room. The innkeeper says in Japanese, "you wouldn't like it here, we have Japanese bathrooms." The hiker replies in Japanese that he has been in Japan for months and would be fine. They go back and forth a couple of times until the hiker in frustration says, in English, "Why can't I just get a place to sleep?" The innkeeper replies, "Because you don't speak Japanese," and slams the door.
Anyway, this kind of behavior is everywhere, especially in any field that does not look difficult. Yes, I have a PhD in computer science. No, I don't fix PCs all day.
The bottom line is that the author is part of the problem. The article is excessively erudite and verbose. He's clearly not talking to anyone outside of his field. He misrepresents the state of the "other side" to make points. (Quick, call up the ghost of William F. Buckley and ask him about the state of the American right.) And he is not saying anything new.
universities teach myth and research profit.
"Here they lie."