he basically wants me to link him an academic study in the humanities/liberal arts/social sciences that fulfill his criteria of a 'decent' research paper, i.e. one that meets the research aims of an engineering paper, ergo: makes a 'clear breakthrough' in knowledge; evidence of some sort of 'leap forward' or notion of linear 'progress' towards an ever-improving future or contemporaneity; it must be 'new' or concerned with the modern, because everything old-fashioned has already been read once and is thus 'done', etc. which of course, i'm not going to do, because his starting presumptions are completely ignorant and wrong. humanities research has never worked that way, and imposing some scientific 'progress' on humanities makes about as much sense as trying to put a shoe on a duck. he posts all self-satisfied in this endeavour, as if he's 'proving' something, but really all he's proving is his own complete ignorance and narrow-mindedness. let alone the fact that much science research and academic writing is actually retroactive and tries to take new lessons from the past, with a revisionary method or historicist approach.
dilbert's idea of 'good' academia is academia with a relentless stress on the new, the novel, the 'new theory'. what he doesn't understand is that continually stressing everyone in a professional discipline to create new, original work, ends up with nobody creating anything of any merit or worth. you don't 'discover the atom' in humanities. the scientific method (somewhat) supports a notion of observable fact towards some putative objective 'truth', hence a notion of 'progress' towards that ultimate goal (e.g. a complete empirical model and explanation of the universe). humanities doesn't even trade in certainties, let alone have the arrogance to proclaim any sort of objective, universal, final 'truth' (outside of a historical or socially constituted reality), so really the whole idea of "new research making forward-looking breakthroughs" is a little faulty. dilbert won't get this though. it's a little over his head. poor thing. he thinks he's making some radical and irrefutable crushing blow to a discipline composed of thousands of years of history, and some of the smartest minds around. dilbert knows better than oxford professors.
oh and i've ignored him now, so you don't need to worry.
dilbert's idea of 'good' academia is academia with a relentless stress on the new, the novel, the 'new theory'. what he doesn't understand is that continually stressing everyone in a professional discipline to create new, original work, ends up with nobody creating anything of any merit or worth. you don't 'discover the atom' in humanities. the scientific method (somewhat) supports a notion of observable fact towards some putative objective 'truth', hence a notion of 'progress' towards that ultimate goal (e.g. a complete empirical model and explanation of the universe). humanities doesn't even trade in certainties, let alone have the arrogance to proclaim any sort of objective, universal, final 'truth' (outside of a historical or socially constituted reality), so really the whole idea of "new research making forward-looking breakthroughs" is a little faulty. dilbert won't get this though. it's a little over his head. poor thing. he thinks he's making some radical and irrefutable crushing blow to a discipline composed of thousands of years of history, and some of the smartest minds around. dilbert knows better than oxford professors.
oh and i've ignored him now, so you don't need to worry.
Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-28 06:19:24)
