Dilbs I'm not going to quote bomb you because I think we both know you are making a stupid point that stems from no real understanding (or actual interest) in the above. Firstly, I never said science/math/tech or anything else cannot involve 'big thinking'. Why are you getting so inflamed and assuming that my personal response to a personal question excludes all other answers? It makes you look idiotic to the extreme. I took my subject because I like the big thinking involved in it - as I have said at length before - the cross-disciplinary reading, learning and research that branches all fields. Some of the above examples clearly demonstrate that: pieces of work of 100,000+ words that
simply use a text or an author as a starting point with which to explore far deeper issues in politics, economics, history, psychology, sociology, law, language, philosophy, theory/lit crit, classics, etc. etc. The 'book' part, i.e. that which is concerned with the text-in-itself or the author, is just a sort of
prism or
focal point through which you do your research into the rest of the subject. The book can even be nothing more than an initial
triggering point and sort of primary-text
evidencing to refer to book-length studies on issues that have nothing to do with 'x' novel or 'y' author; the literature part is just there as a reference and anchoring point for your monograph on political science, Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, Keynesian economics, post-colonial struggles, etc. I'd say literature is known in the humanities as being the most open and syncretic subject: you can literally study anything you want, so long as you can put it into a well-formed argument and meet certain standards of academic rigour and rhetorical soundness.
As for your long and pointless ranting about the topics that people choose to do in top-level departments... well, to be frank, it's pointless spending 2 paragraphs explaining in the minute detail why you are wrong (or perhaps just picking the wrong argument), because you don't understand and you aren't willing to understand. We've quote-bombed one another in the past on PhD topics from various universities (Colombia and Oxford, as well, I believe), and you still aren't willing to understand that a 'research topic' or 'thesis title' involves a little more than 100,000 words of explication on 'Oliver Twist' or 'Charles Dickens biography'. Take the two papers on post-9/11 fiction for example: I'm willing to bet they will be pretty in-depth studies positing and exploring the ways that art and the society it reflects has changed in American literature (and other arts) post-9/11. I'd say that's pretty relevant to the modern world and contributes to some small corner of furthering human knowledge and self-understanding, somehow, somewhere. It may not be singlehandedly triggering the greatest intellectual revolution since the Renaissance, but then (and this is my main point)
99.99999% of all research in
all disciplines is this way. Take my friend, who is just finishing up his physics PhD on 'New Physics In the High Mass Di-Lepton Channel'. Or my housemate who is just about to take up a PhD researching Quarternary Science and contributing a minute boost to understanding of millenia-old rocks in a remote corner of Scotland, to whomever would be so inclined to care about that.
I've already said science more often has the format where you can make a 'discovery' or prove/disprove a theorem and cause some huge 'rupture' or 'break' in understanding; I've conceded that's probably a little more PR/media friendly, and a little more exciting to the layman. But that's very rare. 99% of PhD-level research in any discipline (even those involving 'big thinking') will be mostly about minute and marginal gains in understanding. That's the best and most sincere contribution you can hope to make. Nobody writing a PhD thesis in English is expected to be the next Derrida and invent a whole new philosophic system, just as 99% of science/math students doing abstract-theoretical theses aren't exactly hoping to go on and cause the next Copernican revolution.
So really what is your point? You got angry over something I never said and something my response never even implied.
You got angrier and quote-bombed a load of poor PhD students that are doing pretty high-level work with no pretensions of it being world-changing.
I think your problem really, judging from your ranting tone and points, is with academia in general. Because humanities are not unique in funding and fostering the interests of esoteric and abstract subjects and researchers. Just as many people have made their livings tucked away comfortably in some tenured maths/science department, working on abstract theorems and puzzles that are essentially nothing more than elaborate logical games, as far as the outside world is concerned. I don't know what you think all of the 100's of PhD's viva'd by top-level science/math departments are on every year, but I can guarantee only 10% of them were taken in the interests of 'practical' furthering of human knowledge. And those 10% probably would not be in the 'pure' or 'theoretical' sides of the discipline, either. Your main axe to grind seems to be a cynical one against people making their careers in areas of 'little interest' to the outside world - of people getting paid their whole lives to write papers and do research that approx. 10 other people would ever be inclined to read. Everyone in academia is 'guilty' of this (though I submit that it is not a crime). If you think every new piece of research in the sciences is going to be germane enough for a riveting Science mag read the next week, you are frankly clueless. You should turn your practical engineer's nous and cynicism towards all 'theoretical' and abstract subjects, rather than just humanities, all just because you in particular are not overly interested in the cultural or philosophical. But to rant about 'hipsters' seeking grant money and to think cynically that only humanities is like this way... is hilarious. I'd say science is far worse for research-funding squabbling, petty egotism, and 'advancement' of the field in a purely self-interested, lets-put-my-name-on-something kind of way. To say it's only the humanities that have any sort of selfish or self-involved elements is hilariously biased and blind. Furthermore I think you should bear in mind that only about 1 in 10 of any PhD student in any discipline will ever make it into academia as a paid post-doctoral position.
This is hardly a case of a bunch of people sitting on a gravytrain, making an easy living writing hyper-specialized papers. Spending your 20's doing a PhD is hardly the most cushty and financially secure way to make a living. And are you saying working in HR or Marketing or Finance or any of the other grad-level jobs that 90% of university graduates do is somehow more intrinsically 'beneficial' to the individual and society? Because that's one big hilarious can of worms you're opening, there... at least academic research is interested in
contributing something to a field, even in the smallest way, rather than just looking solely (and only) for personal gain. Not to mention that nearly half of an academics time is spent in
educating others and pedagogy. Chump.
Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-05 06:43:14)
