Re: OT: Should Thinkers Be Left To Do Nothing But Think?

On Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:07:13 -0700, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

Hi All,

While it is true that some great thinkers liked to teach, there are some
who would rather have not, preferring to dedicate 100% of their time to
thinking, but were prevented from doing so because of rules of the
university.

Is there *any* institution, anyplace, where scientists spend most of
their time thinking?

Let me be clear:

Let's say that there are 8 hours in a workday. It might be productive if
some people were let to think, essentially non-stop, for 7 of those
hours, each day, every day, unfettered by responsibilites of teaching,
reviewing papers, writing unproductive papers, meetings, confereneces,
writing grant proposals, etc.

I have been reading about people in history who have done great things,
and they all seem to have in common that, at some point, they were
allowed carte blanche to do nothing but *think*. Some, like Maxwell,
were lucky, in that they had significant financial means to do so
naturally. Others, like Heaviside, were not, and essentially took what
was not granted to them by simply ignoring the bills until they were
served eviction notices. Not good for spirit, not good for mind, not
good for body.

I find it tragic that a person who is predisposed to think, and do
nothing else, is forced to do "other" things, which are unproductive,
and only serve to impede progress toward the objective.

I started thinking about this topic while reading "The Oxford
Illustrated History of Western Philosophy." It was clearly evident from
this book that a bit of class struggle was going on. The philosophers
who wrote the book, and those being written about, did not completely
hide their contempt for scientists, especially after Newton. In one
paragraph, the author of one section of book calls Descartes a "man of
profound genius", then an essentially an idiot only a few paragraphs
later. So I started thinking about what it would be like for the author
to work down the hall from Descartes, who would teach, etc, and
concluded that the distraction might have been too much.

It seemed to me that there might have been plenty of scientists who
would rather not have been bothered with anything but aggressively
seeking the objective, which lead me to speculate that maybe that is how
the university came to its form.

If it is true that the nail that stands up gets hammered, it seems
reasonable that those who are able to understand what is, but not devise
what will be, might have consciously or subconsciously guided the
structure of the university so as to level the playing field. If it is
true that a thinker's greatest contribution to the world, that which
s/he is recognized and lauded for, is yielded from a certain process,
the process of thinking, it would make sense that those who hammer might
force upon them an environment that abates the distinction between
production and non-production.

One way to to that is to distract them. Burden them with frivolous
things. Make them teach, for example. Make them write papers. Make them
go to conferences. Make them have department meetings. Make them share
their knowledge. Make them "collaborate".

Making them do anything that keeps them from spending all their time
thinking.

Cynical? I think not.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

If you read "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feinmann" he reviews his
opportunity to join the Princeton Center for Advanced Study, which he
declined because teaching forces him to review the basics, to answer
profound questions that the kiddies haven't been educated out of asking,
and to generally keep his mind supple and active so he could get some
_real_ thinking done.

Some may be able to "just think", but for me it would be like "just
competing", without ever wasting time on all than nasty exercise and
training stuff.

--
http://www.wescottdesign.com
.

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