Macbeth wrote:
Where does linguistics fall into this debate? It is a complex field that produces some "real world uses". It doesn't involve math though and is more accessible than engineering.
Linguistics bridges both the humanities and the sciences. I do a lot of linguistics work, but then again someone doing a course in linguistics at MIT will take a much more scientific approach to the discipline. Linguistics incorporates both philosophy and literature (analytic philosophy, semiotics, deconstructiionism, structuralism, poststructuralism) and the sciences of linguistics itself (i.e. grammar, syntax, language; phonemes and speech and the division of language into classes for study; the sort of computer-science approach to language). You can apply principles of linguistics to philosophy (e.g. Plato's transcendentalism or idealism viewed in a post-Saussurean universe as a relation of the sign to the signifier/signified; viewing the text as an unstable object composed of a system of shifting meanings in the style of Derrida/Barthes in Continental philosophy, DeMan in the Yale approach, etc.) Or you can basically go down the more scientific approach popularised by Chomsky, and posit a scientifically-based theory of "universal grammar", or some such. Linguistics is ripe soil for the 20th century, because philosophy and 'big thinking' in the humanities has mostly shied away from metaphysics and idealism-- which is, of course, a natural consequence of the rising to the fore of materialism. Focus is instead on language and the concrete problems of reality, rather than on large abstractions, which q.v. Wittgenstein and Russell, which pretty much changed the entire ballgame in early 20th century philosophy and gave linguistics a core place in academia (which q.v. pragmatism, which was pretty much America's response/continuation).
Dilbert, once again, I've said you have no understanding of how a 100,000 word thesis is structured or what sort of research it involves. For some reason you think a medieval thesis involves no 'big thinking' or relation to anything outside itself, and yet some biologist's work or quarternary scientist's work is, of course, concerned with grand meta-questions of the entire universe and is hyper-modern. Not so. You are hung up on a bias view of humanities research and in love with this view of all scientific research as a golden quest towards Absolute Truth. It's boring. Get out of your high-school science teacher's pants, 'cause that's the last place and time I saw that sort of torturous rhetoric. "Curing diseases, unravelling the universe, unlocking the secrets of nature". This is laughable. You really think every single PhD submitted for a science/math department is anywhere near this lofty or ambitious? (Not to mention not a single academic math/science candidate will have a shit to do with medicine). At a stretch, maybe a few bright sparks and rising stars in their discipline will really contribute in this way. Of all the science/math doctoral candidates I have met, none of them are doing work which they could honestly say relates to a 'bigger picture' or 'massive breakthrough'. They're high-end logical puzzles, abstractions, theories contributing to the great logical scaffolding that supports 'theoretical' science or maths. A maths academic, and most 'theoretical' science academics, are closer to a philosophy don than an engineer.
Your anti-academia stance is boring, really. Your view that the world should just be about things with "results" or "making a difference" is laughable. A scientist taking a blunt Occam's razor to culture? Thank fuck you're not in charge of any important decisions, ever, except for lining your own pockets and deciding which political or social issue to troll on an Internet forum. You also speak as if academia and intellectual research of this sort hasn't been around for about 2,000+ years, haha. Like it's a modern phenomenon for "hipsters" and "douchebags". Rofl. Really. Having a sensible debate with you is impossible because you know that you spout nothing but blind dogmatism. At the end of the day you ideologically privilege the sort of 'truths' that science finds far above any sort of 'truth' or 'insight' that philosophy or literature or culture yields. This is a value judgement (of yours), not an ontic truth; you personally find scientific truth more profound than an emotional insight, or a philosophical treatise on Being (which science cannot and will not ever try to explain; the mechanics and etiology of 'being' are not the same as what it is to Be). If understanding how the universe came into being is of more interest to you than having a clearer sense of self-knowledge (whether on an individual-existential level or a wider understanding of society's history and structure): well that's up to you. But don't try to say one or the other is necessarily more vital. In the world of academic research, where nothing is really much concerned with 'practical difference' (and rightly so) and is more simply concerned with truths, nobody tries to arrogate that one single 'truth' is more important than another. Who is to say which will make your own life more meaningful? Is the mathematician's understanding and research into elliptic curves more important than the physicist's interest in boundary conditions for electromagnetic fields on a delta-function plate? Is the psychologist's understanding of our brain and psychology more important than the geographer's understanding of weather systems, or the geologist's understanding of atmospheric conditions 2.5 million years ago? Is the philosopher's interest in phenomenology more vital than the politician's interest in post-Marxist dialectical materialism? You are into treacherous waters when you take your value judgements as objective fact. You also look dumb.
Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-07 10:20:09)
