My field is more academic, nyah, nyah, was: Re: Brin: LotR and Conservatives

2004-01-31 Thread Jim Sharkey 

I prefer the expression My brain is bigger than yours, myself.  If I could attach 
images, I'd add the picture of Brain Guy from MST3K.

FWIW, this has been an entertaining little discourse.  Well worth the price of 
admission of a few hours of reading.  And at my billing rate, that's decent money.  :)

Jim
Gotta go write a check to Gautum and DB Maru

___
Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com
The most personalized portal on the Web!
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

My field is more academic, nyah, nyah, was: Re: Brin: LotR and Conservatives

2004-01-30 Thread David Hobby 
Gautam Mukunda wrote:
 
 --- David Hobby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
You are probably right, if International Relations
  qualifies as an academic field.  Technically it
  does, since
  it is studied at colleges.  But it seems too
  politicized for me
  to grant it much respect.
 
 As someone who just finished applying for PhD programs
 in the field, I suppose I should take offense at this.
  But of course it is politicized.   It is the study of
 _politics_.  God forbid that we should try to explore
 the most important questions facing the human race for
 fear of violating someone's idea of pure academia.
 
O.K., let's try a different tack.  How do people in 
your field decide who is right?  How do they test theories?
What are their standards of evidence?
Feel free to disabuse me of this, but my opinion is 
that it is mostly a matter of how articulately one argues, and 
what the existing big names in the field think.  Can you point
me to papers with clearly testable theories, subjected to 
objective methods of verification?

Also note that being Dean is NOT an academic
  position,
  it is administrative.  The same goes for Ms. Rice's
  work as
  Provost:
 
 Not at Nitze.  The _current_ Dean of Nitze is Eliot
 Cohen, one of the best political scientists in the
 world.  Being Dean of Nitze is a very big deal - in
 the same league of prestige as being head of the

But this is my point!  It is prestigious to be an 
administrator, rather than a scholar.  This implies to me that
the whole field is shallow, so that the only way to recognize
quality research is by popular acclaim.
In REAL fields of academia, most of the smart people
shun administrative work, doing it when necessary as an onerous 
chore.
Here's a test:  Can someone who is an outsider to the field
have their contributions recognized?  I'm thinking of someone like
Ramanujan, brilliant but not an academic.  (See this link for details:
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Ramanujan.html)  Or 
Einstein.  If he had worked in International Relations, would he
have gotten a job better than the patent office?

  In my experience, real scholars avoid administrative
  work like
  the plague!  (I should know, it's my turn to be
  Chair...)
 
 Of?

Mathematics, SUNY at New Paltz

It's O.K. for awhile, but nothing I'd like for too long.
And prestige?  What good is that?  

---David Hobby
   Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 1983
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Re: My field is more academic, nyah, nyah, was: Re: Brin: LotR and Conservatives

2004-01-30 Thread Gautam Mukunda 
--- David Hobby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   O.K., let's try a different tack.  How do people in
 
 your field decide who is right?  How do they test
 theories?
 What are their standards of evidence?
   Feel free to disabuse me of this, but my opinion is
 that it is mostly a matter of how articulately one
 argues, and 
 what the existing big names in the field think.  Can
 you point
 me to papers with clearly testable theories,
 subjected to 
 objective methods of verification?

Well, mainly we argue about it.  Politics is hard, and
math is not the only path to truth.  The people who
fetishize mathematical analysis are doing a great deal
of harm to political science, in my opinion.  But take
a look at any of the classics in the field - _The
Clash of Civilizations_ is a famous modern one.  In
that one, Sam tested his predictions against a
historical case (the situation in Yugoslavia) and made
some predictions.  Both came off fairly well.  Did he
convince everyone?  No.  It's _politics_.  Of course
it's politicized.  That's what we do.
  Not at Nitze.  The _current_ Dean of Nitze is
 Eliot
  Cohen, one of the best political scientists in the
  world.  Being Dean of Nitze is a very big deal -
 in
  the same league of prestige as being head of the
 
   But this is my point!  It is prestigious to be an 
 administrator, rather than a scholar.  This implies
 to me that
 the whole field is shallow, so that the only way to
 recognize
 quality research is by popular acclaim.
   In REAL fields of academia, most of the smart
 people
 shun administrative work, doing it when necessary as
 an onerous 
 chore.

No, my point was that to get to _be_ Dean of Nitze you
have to have done real academic work of serious
impact.  Sam Huntington everyone knows.  Graham
Allison invented the modern theory of institutional
decision making in _Essence of Decision_.

   Here's a test:  Can someone who is an outsider to
 the field
 have their contributions recognized?  I'm thinking
 of someone like
 Ramanujan, brilliant but not an academic.  (See this
 link for details:

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Ramanujan.html)
  Or 
 Einstein.  If he had worked in International
 Relations, would he
 have gotten a job better than the patent office?

Well, they could have in the old days.  Not now.  But
that's equally true in the hard sciences.  There
aren't any Swiss patent clerks out there any more. 
But Stanley Hoffmann, for example, is a lawyer by
academic training - he doesn't have a degree in the
field.  And there is no one more respected than him.

 And prestige?  What good is that?  
 
   ---David Hobby
  Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 1983

Well, I wrote my senior thesis, and will write my PhD
dissertation, in answer to that question :-)  But what
it really is is a shorthand way of saying how
respected your work is in the field.

I would point out that your arguments are far _more_
applicable to history or English than they are to
political science, which at least tries really hard to
adopt the standards of the hard sciences (sometimes
too hard!).  Does your criticism extend to them as
well?  In other words, are you saying nothing is
academic except a science?  Or is it just political
science that you object to?

=
Gautam Mukunda
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Freedom is not free
http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l