XPost: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.philosophy.zen   
   From: tanghuyen@gmail.com   
      
   On 11/2/2016 9:18 AM, Lee Dillion wrote:   
      
   > Tang Huyen:   
      
   >> The French have a saying: With increasing specialisation,   
   >> the experts will know everything about nothing.   
      
   > This is a common problem across all areas of knowledge, it   
   > seems.  I see students with a lot of general common sense   
   > about problem solving struggle to gain specialized knowledge   
   > while retaining overall connections.  They can become so   
   > focused in their areas of expertise that they try to stuff all   
   > issues into their narrow area they have mastered rather than   
   > step back and see other connections and solutions.   
   >   
   > I fear I was much smarter years ago when I knew far less.   
      
   Chomsky has harped much on the stupidity that universities   
   force down the throats of their students, though I don't   
   remember the exact wording. I think that I am lucky that I   
   did not get ground to bits by a post-graduate programme,   
   in which professors would have pushed me the way that   
   hamburger paste is made. I worked and studied on the side   
   on my own, as an hobby, without any professor breathing   
   down my neck and telling me what to think. I could and can   
   choose how to think from my own side, without external   
   help, and also without external interference, which in my   
   case would have been enormous since my thinking is quite   
   unorthodox, to put it mildly.   
      
   And as I said many times before, to me there seems to be a   
   glass ceiling of abstraction against which the white scholars   
   in the humanities singly and collectively bump up and fall   
   down, even if they can discourse on methods of unity and   
   systematicity, paradigms, forms, structures, syntagmas, etc.   
   which they fail to apply insofar as they apparently take them   
   as content rather than form, though form is said to form and   
   inform the content since Plato and Aristotle. Strangely,   
   logicians and the logically minded philosophers who work   
   on the philosophy of philosophy are quite good at   
   discoursing on their expertise in content, but are unable to   
   take it as form to explain philosophy, which is what they   
   should do. They are mired in a morass of content and can   
   scarcely stand back to abstract the form from it. They   
   constantly teach criticality, higher critique, etc., but only in   
   content and scarcely jump in to apply them in the concrete,   
   namely whatever content of their various disciples is. The   
   non-white scholars in the humanities are not any better, and   
   possibly worse, be they at Nobel powerhouses like Tokyo   
   and Kyoto.   
      
   As you say: "They can become so focused in their areas of   
   expertise that they try to stuff all issues into their narrow   
   area they have mastered rather than step back and see   
   other connections and solutions." I take your "they" to cover   
   all scholars in the humanities, including the luminaries like   
   Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger.   
      
   Pretty grandiose, eh? But as the former contributor (now   
   dead?) Theravad used to say, one should reach beyond   
   one's grasp, which is what I am trying to do. Quixotic, but   
   why not? At most, I fail.   
      
   Tang Huyen   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)