XPost: alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen
From: invalid@invalid.invalid
Tang Huyen wrote:
> 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
>
It's a challenge for young people. They're already challenged enough by
the economic circumstances of their student loans, or by daddy's
expectations if he's paying cash up front for a degreed whatever it is he
thinks he's buying. Intellectual integrity walks through a snakepit,
because that's all there is to walk through.
When a student has pulled together around himself a thick enough blanket of
approval to feel safe, it's cold outside. Having learned the basic use of
the hammer, looking askance at new mental technology is understandable.
Unfortunately that blanket of approval is made of not very much.
--
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* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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