* From: Leigh Meyers
I don't know that "narrow" is the correct word. I converse with many folks that have graduate & Ph.Ds Whereas I have 9 years of "formal" education, and have gone back to community college at the age of 51. It does give me an interesting (ok ok misanthropic) AcademiaWorld view. What I see in academia is the tendency towards... hyper-specialization(?) which in the long run, quite literally leaves the academician not seeing the forest for the trees. What was it Einstein said about the atomic bomb...something like: If I had known what they were going to do with my work I would never have participated. That's a paraphrase, forgive. But I think it illustrates what I see happen in other fields as well. You'd think Einstein would have known the potential, but his mind was... elsewhere. ***** CB: I like the legendary, loveable scholar persona, but Comrade Einstein was so focussed on finding the things-in-themaelves, he was not cognizant of the necessity to discover things-for-us,nor of the fact that imperialist warmongers would clearly use physics discoveries against-us ( the human race) and not for-us. I'll look for my essay on this presented at the University of Mich. Einstein, I am sad to say, ends up a kind of Sorcerer's Apprentice, who released powers that he was unable to call back under control. Here is a critical example of why natural scientific "enterprise" is not politically neutral. Sure the relativity of "the universe" is the same for workers and bourgeoisie, but knowledge of relativity has a different impact on the world in the hands of one or the other. Physicists, biologists, computer scientists have got to have consciousness of what science for the People really is. Imperialism will exploit the discoveries of geniuses to make weapons and devices of mass destruction and control.
