“…I enter into the ancient courts of the men of antiquity, where, warmly received, I feed on that which is my only food and which was meant for me. I am not ashamed to speak with them and ask them the reasons of their actions, and they, because of their humanity, answer me…I feel no weariness; my troubles forgotten, I neither fear poverty nor dread death. I give myself over entirely to them. And since Dante says that there can be no science without retaining what has been understood, I have noted down the chief things in their conversation.”
– Machiavelli
Long-time readers know that Christopher I. Beckwith, author of the magisterial Empires of the Silk Road, is a vehement critic of what he calls “modernism,” and its impact on learning and scholarship. When I first encountered his views I thought they were peculiar and amusing. I literally laughed as I read the last chapter of Empires of the Silk Road. Today, I am not so sure.
Recently I was talking to a younger friend on what the point of this is. “This”, as in the life of reading and reflection that some of us attempt to partake of. Some of my friends in academia admit that they no longer read books. Their lives are orientated around the cycle of grant applications and publications which feed their laboratories. That was not the life for me, obviously. Is it the life that they imagined?
Meanwhile, many who claim humanistic interests seem to only focus on reinterpreting the past to prosecute present political cases. That is fine, more or less. But it becomes tedious when it becomes the totality. When the conclusions swallow the whole process. When the endpoint of all journeys are predetermined by political exigency.
The rise of an activist culture within academia over the past decade has brought scholarly pursuits into the world, rather than separating intellectual reflection in some manner from the world. Some activist scholars demand uniform alignment of political beliefs and orientation. This is a very small minority, but a faction which is gifted with boldness and courage due to their cohesion of purpose. The silent majority are craven and cowardly. I have no expectation that they will stop the trend you see today, which will ultimately undermine public support for the whole institution and the culture of intellectual production.
So what comes after? The traditions that emerged in the 17th-century were bound to fade away. That day is nearing, isn’t it? Or am I wrong?
My children will live to the end of this century in all likelihood. What world will they see? What books should they keep in their libraries as the empire of the mind fractures?
I think a huge part of the difference is that universities used to be rather small institutions catering to the 1-2% of the population that wanted to live lives of reading and reflection, at least for four years. Their success made them mainstream, and mainstream institutions have to adapt to mainstream tastes.
The communities of scholars that once met in the pubs of Oxford town are online now. The mainstream doesn’t care about them, and that’s probably for the best.
Any student of history knows that it’s difficult enough to predict the past, let alone the future. But a lot of recent graduates have huge debts and tiny jobs, and I suspect they will strongly discourage their own kids from taking out student loans. I suspect that the heavily politicized disciplines will be first to get the axe when the inevitable budget cuts come.
I have no expectation that they will stop the trend you see today
To what degree do you have hope for the possible impact of the Heterodox Academy?
Razib:
Meanwhile, many who claim humanistic interests seem to only focus
on reinterpreting the past to prosecute present political cases.
Unquestionably true. I was recently at a workshop in which a
cultural anthropologist, who was attacking population genetics as
a discipline, said:
” The point of archaeology is the liberation of oppressed peoples.”
Well I had thought that it was to uncover the past.
What he was saying here as a subtext was that
he won’t collaborate, unless you share his political views.
A crucially important part of our culture has been formed
by scientists such as Galileo, Newton and the thinkers
of the Enlightenment. They showed that one could uncover truths
by making observations and examining data. Galileo’s real offense was not that he thought that the Earth went round the Sun, but
that he had a methodology to uncover truth, independent of revealed scripture.
We must resist the idea that intellectual work has to reaffirm current political views.
I think I’m just re-wording others’ comments here, but I think that the main culprit here is the disappearing distinction between science and faith. Science for these purposes is a conclusion which can be replicated.
As people recognized the immense real benefits of science to society, many groups (especially in academia) sought the mantle of “science” for their own disciplines. So, we get the social “sciences” — which are not really scientific at all. Or we get disciplines which use science but cannot be replicated over the their relevant time scales — economics and environmental science.
So here is the controversial statement — the vector allowing the distinction between faith and science to disappear is statistics. Specifically, statistics has lowered the bar for investigators — the conclusion does not have to replicate all the time — it just has to be “significant.”
Besides the moral hazard this introduces to the investigator, it moved the scientific Overton window for what is classified as “science”. I think that this breach in the scientific method has opened the way for “other way of knowing” to be equal to actual science. The various modern cults now feel comfortable giving their faith the legitimacy of SCIENCE.
I’m a statistician and I love it, but I also don’t fundamentally believe in randomness. For me it is a simple tool. I think that most users of statistics across a number of disciplines don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) the intricate assumptions of statistics. Maybe the book that Razib tweeted about will help.
There is hope here. Machine Learning is much more explicit about the trade-offs between “fitting” data and “predicting”. In many cases, this is an inverse relationship. This has created a conscious understanding of the perils of modeling of complex systems considering how easy it is to over-fit “big data” it is a necessary awareness. Maybe this will trickle down to the social “sciences” at some point.
nick, you are an old white male.
thus have you been refuted in this age.
In similar sentiment to Jay, but with a slightly different tack, much of this is about the transformation of scholars and students due to transformations in size and how much of society’s wealth and income scholars and students control.
We go away from a marginally sized sector of society controlling a marginal level of society’s wealth, which is then expected to form persuasive arguments to mobilize society as a whole. Reputation as relatively impartial and apolitical experts matters to this end. We go towards a larger block whose identity as graduates and scholars is mobilized separately from society and which increasingly controls most of society’s financial resources (it can ‘win’ and impose its own terms without having to worry too much about if it’s appealing).
Individual conscience and impartiality is not something which can be afforded, or less engaged to build better arguments and reputation, as much as it becomes more viewed as an impediment to coordination (even if this whole education class is still moderately more pro-conscience than society as a whole).
Also changes to lower voting participation by non-tert educated workers and decline of unions as representative institutions for non-tert educated workers deepen trends.
Essentially I am conjecturing that as universities’ graduates collectively control a larger share of political power and wealth, tendencies deepen to use them as power blocs towards social movements in and of themselves without worrying as much about if this blunts their ability to persuade and be trusted by the broader society. This doesn’t happen at once but is probably more likely to be precipitated by fast economic, demographic, political change.
That’s perhaps the present. The future (will this continue or collapse?) I don’t know about.
@Nick,
While we have your ear, it seems like the Reich group has recently taken a noted interest in ancient African DNA – Mark Lipson’s Shum Laka abstract that was released at SAA 2019, and I believe someone from your lab was also working on Nubian DNA from the Meroitic through Christian periods? Any ETA on when either of these studies will be released, and do you guys have more ancient African DNA in your pipeline?
@Mick
you are well informed but I can’t say more than you know.
The Reich lab is interested in human history across the planet and
we are now getting useful aDNA from Africa which is great. I hope
we can go back deeper in time (we will see) but almost anything from
pre-colonial times is of great interest.
@ Eric K
As people recognized the immense real benefits of science to society, many groups (especially in academia) sought the mantle of “science” for their own disciplines.
This is what physicist Richard Feynman colorfully called Cargo Cult Science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
– though of course things are so much worse now than in 1974
Maybe this will trickle down to the social “sciences” at some point.
Never happen, unless the Woke are somehow dethroned from the total dominance of those “disciplines.” They are fanatics, and this is their faith. Much more likely social sciences/ humanities wither on the vine due to budget cuts and university closings. Look at how the Woke are frantically trying to attach themselves now to STEM, they sense this coming.
Disciplines like grievance studies will continue to persist as long as wealthy, politically-motivated individuals and organizations continue to donate massive amounts to universities.