Brian Leiter points to a short essay by John Perry about his colleagues in philosophy, and excerpts this scene:
[A] thought about this wonderful and interesting group of people, my philosophical colleagues. I have a very distinct memory of arriving at the Eastern Meetings of the American Philosophical Association some years back, when they were held at a hotel in Baltimore. The meetings began just after a National Football League playoff game had been played in that city, and the previous occupants of the hotel seemed to be mainly people connected with this game. Since I was flying from the west coast, and had to attend some meeting or other in the early afternoon of the first day, I arrived the night before most of the other participants. I was able to watch the amazing transformation that took place as the football crowd checked out and the philosophy crowd checked in. The NFL people were large, some very large, most quite good-looking, confident, well-dressed, big-tipping, successful-looking folk; the epitome of what Americans should be, I suppose, according to the dominant ethos. We philosophers were mostly average-sized, mostly clearly identifiable as shabby pedagogues, clutching our luggage to avoid falling into unnecessary tipping situations. We included many bearded men— some elegant, some scruffy— all sorts of interesting intellectual looking women; none of the philosophers, not even the big ones and the beautiful ones, were likely to be mistaken for the football players, cheerleaders, sportscasters and others who were checking out. The looks from the hotel staff members, who clearly sensed that they were in for a few days of less expansive tipping and more modest bar-tabs, were a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. The talk, as philosophers recognized each other and struck up conversations, was unlike anything that ever had been or would be heard in that hotel lobby: whether there are alternative concrete possible worlds; whether there is anything in Heidegger not better said already by Husserl; whether animals should be eaten; not to mention topics that aroused truly deep passions, mostly related to proper names.
What a wonderful group of people, I thought, and how wonderful, and lucky, that the world has managed to find a niche for us. Even if philosophy had no real intellectual content at all — was as silly as astrology or numerology certainly are, or as I suspect, in dark moments, that certain other parts of the university are— it would still be wonderful that it existed, simply to keep these people occupied. Especially me. What would I be doing without this wonderful institution? Helping people in some small town in Nebraska with their taxes and small legal problems, I suppose, and probably not doing it very well.
It would take very little to apply this to physicists (or scientists, or academics more generally) as well as philosophers. We tend not to bring up Heidegger, but we do argue about alternative possible worlds all the time.
More importantly, it’s the second paragraph that hits home. How fortunate we are to live in a time and place where society is sufficiently robust and diverse as to put aside a bit of its resources in order to foster a tiny group of people whose professional duty it is to think deeply about the secrets of the universe. I am reminded of the dedication page in the most poetic general relativity textbook ever written, Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler:
We dedicate this book
To our fellow citizens
Who, for love of truth,
Take from their own wants
By taxes and gifts,
And now and then send forth
One of themselves
As dedicated servant,
To forward the search
Into the mysteries and marvelous simplicities
Of this strange and beautiful Universe,
Our home.
Wow, poetry about theft! How could I miss it all these years?
“Who, for love of truth, Take from their own wants”?!?
How about “Who, under the threat of imprisonment, Are relieved of the product of their toil”?
Grrrr…
Although I may occasionally whine about the difficulties, let me add: How fortunate we are to live in a time and place where women, as well as men, are allowed to think deeply about the secrets of the universe.
That is a very nice essay, with many other interesting points…one can certainly think about theoretical physicists as fitting the same mold as the described philosophers, but maybe not physicists in general- I have some colleagues who are doing very concrete things, building things with their hands, and I suspect they would want to think about themselves as the football (or rather hockey) croud, especially if one believes that romanticized description in the essay…
It is refreshing to see a celebration of the academic profession, I still remember how awe-inspiring it was for me to enter a university campus for the first time, and how luxorious it felt to be exposed to all these wonderful ideas…It is good to be reminded how lucky we are.
More modest bar-tabs? Philosophers?
I have experienced a paradox overload and must shut down now.
Dissident,
I take it you did not elect those that govern and tax you?
Or you disagree with the principle that to the decision of a majority, the minority should yield? Democracy?
If not please think before you shout this nonsense.
—
Beautfull text, and immensely true. It also contains a warning, for our society is developing into a direction where there is less and less appreciation for and acceptance of these orchids of the human endeavour.
We must not forget to give back our elation and enthusiasm, our sense of wonder and achievement if we are to inspire and perhaps also inform those who have released us into the wide wild beautifull unknown.
-fh
Sean,
A very nice piece. It is certainly refreshing and inspiring to be reminded, once in a while, that the main reason for all the work and late nights is to understand the innermost workings of the universe. Although it may seem that academia is all about glory-seeking, insidious competition and very hard work for sometimes nothing at all, well….at its heart it is only about curiosity and truth.
If one were to improve “other wrapping features” on the logic of mathmatics taken to generalization , then what advancements could the mathematics have taken to assume it be based on a feasible attributes describing reality? “A theory of everything.” 🙂
It is a inductive/deductive feature of Objective Truth,” that progresses along side of each other?
Mathematics(logic?) and experiment?
fh: that is correct, I did not elect those that govern and tax me.
Furthermore, I most certainly disagree with the “principle” that to the decision of a majority, the minority should yield, also known as “might is right”. If I go out for a walk and stumble upon two thugs, and they proceed to relieve me of my property, I resist them even though they are the majority and I am the minority. Imagine that.
Please think before you shout this nonsense.
Dissident,
Who should fund fundamental research? The free market? Should we hope for money from a naming rights deal? The Wal-Mart Large Hadron Collider?
What alternative method of support for research do you suggest? Or should it not be supported?
Elliot
Elliot, who should fund ?
There’s this old piece of folk wisdom saying “put your money where your mouth is”. If you like then fund it with your own money. It’s really not a difficult concept to grasp.
Ooops. Previous post is partially unreadable because pseudo-markup was interpreted as HTML tags. Never mind, the concept should nevertheless be clear. The missing parts say “INSERT PET SUBJECT HERE”. It’s not just fundamental research, you know. Just about every craze out there has this or that that he or she would like everybody else to pay for.
Nor is it difficult to grasp that, as an individual, footing the entire bill myself is beyond my grasp.
So we decided to pool our resources, and formed an organization which would fund those indeavours (not just fundamental research) which, collectively, we’d like to see funded, but which are beyond our individual pocket-books to pay for.
We couldn’t decide what to call this organization, but, after much discussion, we settled on … the government.
Catchy, eh?
…”more modest bar-tabs, …” ugh??
Not in my personal experience at these sorts of events. There is a considerable economic difference between the beer chugging bourbon guzzling NFL types and the wine sogged, scotch crazed philosophy bunch.
“whether there is anything in Heidegger not better said already by Husserl.” Clearly Perry is with my side on this, else he would not have phrased it quite this way. Then again, phenomenology is making an interesting come-back, particularly in the consciousness studies and researches.
I suspect that physicists and mathematicians carry around more expansive laptops and other associated technologies, but still would be much the same. As you point out all too wonderfully: “How fortunate we are to live in a time and place where society is sufficiently robust and diverse as to put aside a bit of its resources…”
I can only hope “dissident” receives only private corporate funding for whatever s/he does to earn sufficient funds that s/he can actually be taxed by some governmental entity. And of course i am sure s/he never ever uses any possible public commons, when s/he seems to prefer to use the money earned to only fund private endeavors. Anti-tax rhetoric seems to always be a personal thing that usually ends up in some necessary hypocritical contradiction. I, for one, am happy to admit that i spent my entire professional career(45 years worth, counting jobs i used to fund graduate school–hell, my undergrad full scholarship was from taxpayer generated endowments), and now retirement, being paid by public largesse for which i gladly and willingly paid my taxes and other necessary support (donations etc. to academic institutions and for my students).
All: The amount of federal dollars which funds research in the basic physical sciences in the US is miniscule compared to our federal budget and GDP. And it is less, as a percentage of GDP, than most other developed nations spend. In high energy physics (discipline singled out only because I know the numbers) both the total amount spent and percentage of GDP is less than what the European Union invests. In the US, it is ~2.3 cents/person/year (for HEP). If Congress voted today to delete all funding for the basic physical sciences, I assure you, we would not notice the difference in our tax bill, or in the federal deficit. (In fact, if Congress deleted ALL discretionary funding there would not be much relief to our federal deficit.)
Oops – I forgot the NSF! That raises the amount spent on HEP to 2.5 cents/person/year.
Non-defense discretionary funding, I think you mean.
Dissident,
Is there, in your view, any legitimate government expense?
I’d prefer that my tax dollars were not used to support an immoral and unjustified war but in a “democracy” (well sort of) thats how it goes.
If you believe in absolutely no government expenditures at all for any purpose whatsoever, please say so and we can just agree to disagree.
Regards,
Elliot
An interesting possibility arises here. Suppose you include into the mix a small group of philosophers who are also avid football fans. How would they be perceived as a group – by the hotel staff, the other philosophers and the rest of the football crowd?
JoAnne,
Your numbers don’t sound right. Aren’t they about:
DOE: $700-750 million/year
NSF: $150 millon/year
of which $50-100 million goes to theorists.
Given about 300 million Americans, this is a bit less than $3 /year, not cents.
Whether it’s 3 dollars or 3 cents doesn’t change your larger point in the slightest.
Peter, I think JoAnne singled out the HEP portion of the budget.
I was never aware of the numbers and I find them really surprising. In comparison, the last figure I dug up on NSERC (Canadian rough equivalent of NSF) is a budget of 850 Million CAD (for a population of roughly 30 Million?), also some provincial governments (especially Ontario’s) support science quite a bit.
My impression was always that science is very well-supported in the US, are those numbers radically different from the usual (pre-Bush) situation?
Oh, sorry, comparing apples and oranges here, I guess you also singled out the HEP?
Anyhow, my confusion, you guys carry on with whatever you were doing…
just be glad you’re not science fiction fans, who are so “different” as to appear a separate humanoid species.
(Pyracantha, just back from a science fiction/fantasy convention)
?What a wonderful group of people, I thought, and how wonderful, and lucky, that the world has managed to find a niche for us. Even if philosophy had no real intellectual content at all — was as silly as astrology or numerology
certainly are….”
Ouch, hurts my ‘astrological compnent’. I suppose the Cycles & Symbols conf. would have set off alarm bells….
Pirsig in the lobby, perhaps….
Intuitive arts, of course it’s nonsense…..
Now, back into the box….
John Perry was having a special moment when he wrote this piece. He seems oddly naive for a modern philosopher.
Have to agree with Dissident: Democracy is a mirage; power is definitely not in the hands of the people (even the majority is scammed by fake “representation”).
Gov’t is a necessary evil, though – particularly in the incomprehensibly complex milieu generated by applied science.
The power-mad people in government should support science if only to keep it from being completely controlled by the power-mad people in the world of business.
Peter, you are absolutely right – I slipped a couple decimal points! (Please bear in mind, I was sitting on the floor of my deck, almost in the dark, too dirty to be in the house after a hard day’s work in the yard, with every muscle starting to ache….I should know better than to do calculations under those conditions! My calculations are usually much more accurate – I promise…) Anyway, thanks for catching this! In 2005, it was $713M from DOE and $72M from NSF for HEP alone, of which about $60M ($49M from DOE and $10M from NSF)goes to theorists. So it is dollars, not cents, per year per person, but that is still meaningless in the grand scheme of our federal budget and our annual tax bills.
Moshe, these budget figures have been the same for more than a decade or so. Sounds good on the surface, until you add in inflation and realize that HEP has lost about 30% of its spending power during that time. This yearly constant budget with no adjustments for inflation has come to be known as `death by a series of small cuts.’