On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:30:50 -0800, Allen Esterson wrote: >I have not read any of Gladwell's books, so, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I >can discuss them without prejudice. :-) But I have read a wide variety of >reviews (plus brief extracts), so those will have to do for the purposes of >what follows.
Ah! So I can discuss Gladwell without prejudice as well! ;-) >First a general point. With books like Gladwell's, especially (though I >think always for books presenting general ideas), one can gain much from >open-minded examinations of the arguments in the more considered reviews. I >know from personal experience how one can get carried away by a book, only >to realise one hasn't noticed the weak spots until they are pointed out by >a more dispassionate observer. I agree with Allen here. Thoughtful reviewers may be able to provide insights that are not available to a reader unless the reader is extremely knowledgeable about the area (especially by providing viewpoints not included in the text they are reviewing; comprehensive scholarship and providing alternative viewpoints is not a standard requirement for books written for a mass market by non-scientists). I hope that I have done something similar in the book reviews that I have written. However, let me go off on a tangent. Although I was generally aware of Gladwell and his books I did not read anything of his closely until a student sent me a copy of an article Gladwell had written for the New Yorker and asked my opinion of it. It was Gladwell's May 12, 2008 article "In the Air; Who says big ideas are rare?". I started reading that article and was wondering where was it going. It seemed rambling to me or, perhaps more accurately, an exercise in topic chaining, that is, an anecdote is presented and then is linked to another anecdote that is connected by a single/few relationships (I imagine that people who like this kind of writing will have found this article enjoyable; I was thinking "so get to the point" and "wrap it up" [I experienced a flashback to a Dave Chappell show episode on this point]). So, okay, a Viking paleotologist who started Microsoft's research division and made hundreds of millions of dollars and has served as a consultant on one of the "Jurassic Park" films and on and on (Does Gladwell engage in such name dropping in his books? One of the off-putting things I found in one of Marty Seligman's books was his discussion of his relationship to Michael Crichton and it was unclear whether there was a real point behind what he was saying or whether he was showing off his famous friends). This ultimately leads to a presentation on something called "Intellectual Ventures", which Gladwell describes as: |In 1999, when Nathan Myhrvold left Microsoft and struck |out on his own, he set himself an unusual goal. He wanted |to see whether the kind of insight that leads to invention |could be engineered. He formed a company called Intellectual |Ventures. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars. He hired |the smartest people he knew. It was not a venture-capital firm. |Venture capitalists fund insights-that is, they let the magical |process that generates new ideas take its course, and then |they jump in. Myhrvold wanted to make insights-to come up |with ideas, patent them, and then license them to interested |companies. He thought that if he brought lots of very clever |people together he could reconstruct that moment by the |Grand River. [NOTE: where the IV group meets] My immediate impression is that this is how someone who is business-savvy but not science savvy would come up with a "great new invention" or "scientific breakthrough" (though scientific knowledge does not seem to be the goal, instead, it is coming up with an intellectual product that would generate lots and lots of money). Maybe my interpretation is wrong. The rest of the article goes on about an IV meeting, who attended, what was discussed and so on. I must admit to having one prejudice sparked during the reading of the article. It occurred at this point in the article: |On the other side of the table from Jung was Lowell Wood, |an imposing man with graying red hair and an enormous head. |Three or four pens were crammed into his shirt pocket. The |screen saver on his laptop was a picture of Stonehenge. | |"You know how musicians will say, 'My teacher was So-and-So, |and his teacher was So-and-So,' right back to Beethoven?" |Myhrvold says. "So Lowell was the great protégé of Edward |Teller. He was at Lawrence Livermore. He was the technical |director of Star Wars." It was the Edward Teller relationship that primed my negative evaluation of the article (if it hadn't been in that mode already). For those who are unfamiliar with Edward Teller, one source is his Wikipedia entry (standard disclaimers apply): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller The PBS "American Experience" program on Oppenheimer also provides some background on Teller and his behavior towards Oppenheimer during the Manhattan project and into the 1950s communist witch hunts. Teller is the so-called "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb" and a proponent of Ronald Reagan's "Strategic Defensive Initiative" (SDI) or popularly known as "Star Wars" -- the impractical defense program that offered to protect the U.S. with a shield with which we would be able to shoot down incoming missiles, etc. I don't believe in guilt by association but I would certainly be in cautious skeptic mode if I were in the company of someone who was Edward Teller's "protege". Gladwell seems to be alright with the person (he doesn't go into any detail about Teller or what working with Teller might mean). Maybe Gladwell has a positive impression of Edward Teller (a lot of people do, especially conservatives and the defense industry). Maybe Gladwell does not know who Teller is or what he has done (though he seems to have examined Oppenheimer's life and one would conclude he knows what Teller did to him). I don't know what Gladwell's opinion of Teller is outside of benign-positive. However, in a positive vein, Teller is reputed to have been one of the inspirations for the Dr. Strangelove character in Stanley Kubrick's film with the same name and that was a really great movie. Back to Gladwell article (am I rambling or imitating Gladwell's writing style?), he covers a meeting of Intellectual Ventures (IV) and goes on and on and on. The student wanted to ask me if I thought IV would be a more efficient mode of doing research and coming up with significant research results. My personal feeling was this was just a bunch of (mostly rich/well to do White) guys getting together and shooting the bull. Maybe an idea will come up and they'll find a grad student or a research assistant to implement it and see what happens. What I think I wound up saying was "this isn't how scientific research is usually conducted and maybe it can be successful but it can't serve a model that many, especially universities, could follow". Perhaps people find Gladwell's writing interesting and maybe even insightful. From what little I've read, he's no Carl Sagan or even Stephen Jay Gould (though some might say that is a good thing). But I think that academics and others may have many reasons for not being impressed by Gladwell and not just because of profit/publicity envy. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
