Scientists are apologetic because the scientific establishment or its political leadership is apologetic and the scientific establishment is apologetic in its effort to justify its very existence by an erroneous hypothesis; the erroneous hypothesis identifies the intellectual or scientific establishment with the intellectual or scientific leadership. This way our culture in general and particularly our science is debased: the false equation of the scientific establishment with the scientific leadership automatically justifies the fact that such scientists as Barbara MacClintock are not recognized for decades. (Agassi, "The Politics of Science," [emphasis added--ES] 36).
[P]retending, especially to our students, that we are ideal, even pretending that we always try hard to become ideal, is very harmful. It forces on our students either the view that they are much inferior to their teachers, or, alternatively, the dreadful observation that their leaders, too, have clay feet. And training them to try to be ideal is not training them to live in an imperfect world and control their own imperfection and the imperfection of the general situation. When they grow up and face their own imperfections they get terrified, do not know what to do, and in a desperate effort to cope get swept into the intrigues that they find all around. (Agassi, "The Politics of Science," 39; [emphasis added]) [HT Joel Katzav]
Agassi's 1986 paper is barely cited by others. One explanation for this, is that it is anecdotal and not rigorous according to acccepted standards. A more subtle reason is that it doesn't cite others, although it mentions a few (high status) fellow travelers. It would be nice to think that it was ignored because people realized that Agassi was basically rediscovering Gordon Tullock's (1966) point about how academic disciplines become a "racket." While Tullock's book has very decent citations, it's primarily cited in works at the intersection of public choice theory and philosophy of economics. My amusing (and partial) experience with referees suggests, it is not well known in philosophy. Perhaps, Agassi's piece was ignored because Agassi is rather combative in print. (I have never met the man; maybe he is sage-like in person.) But in philosophy that has never prevented attention.
Here I want to explore the possibility that Agassi's piece was ignored because its truths hit too close to home. By this I do not mean that people would really honestly deny that there is politics in academic disciplines. Rather, the point is that we are en-cultured into a set of practices and norms that exact terrible costs on our psyches, especially, perhaps, for the most successful among us. To be clear: I do not introduce this topic to diminish the suffering of the adjuncts, the exploited, and the disadvantaged. (In what follows, I'll stick to professional philosophy because that's what I know best.)
Everybody learns quickly that one shouldn't try to be too original beacuse then one is thought 'odd,' 'non-standard,' 'quirky,' or just plain 'non-philosophical.'* Even not being terribly original, as, say, Thomas Kuhn was, but just being sufficiently different from ruling orthodoxy can lead to systematic belittlement (he was, after all, not a trained philosopher). A generation (or two) later, philosophers routinely think in terms inherited from Kuhn about their own discipline--we try to emulate normal science, have paradigms, fashion-driven consensus shifts (recall my unfriendly criticisms of Prof. Eklund, then (still?) the editor of Philosophical Review). I don't say this because I want Kuhn to be liked--I think his image of science is very dangerous for science and for philosophy that emulates it.
The mis-match between ideal and reality is real. Much of the intellectual hazing that goes on in graduate school teaches the aspiring PhD, to recognize the mis-match and internalize the standard(s) of judgment that accompany it. (Of course, it's not the only feature of graduate education--lots of other skills and strategies are taught and exhibited.) And the better one understands the ideal, the more likely one is to discern imperfection in other people's work and -- if one allows oneself a glimpse of it -- oneself. The risk of chronic dissatisfaction is an intrinsic feature of the system.
Now neither Agassi nor I is a trained psychologist, so I am not sure that terror is the only or even the major response to a general recognition of imperfection in oneself. Reading Agassi resonated because as I recounted, I have experienced some such terror, and I have witnessed countless dismissals of what I later came to think of are potentially very worthy philosophical projects by even the most gentle, enduring leaders of the discipline. But rather than sharing such gossip (another time, perhaps!), I mean testimony, of course, and making you -- my dear reader -- complicit in the intrigue, I want to propose that Agassi has put his finger on one of the root causes of the academic bullying we find in professional philosophy--a discipline that has very few external markers of 'meeting the standard,' and so relies, ultimately, on the informed judgments of properly impartial spectators (referees, citations, tenure and promotion committees).** And we all know in our hearts that the citation networks of buddies and students are gratifying and institutionally useful, but ultimately an ersatz gratification. History is not kind to the stars of just a generation ago.
Paradoxically, then, the more one succeeds institutionally within philosophy, the more an intellectually honest scholar who knows the mismatch between ideal and imperfection needs to search for independent confirmation for one's true worth from outside the charmed circle or echo chamber. In general that confirmation is not forthcoming. I hypothesize (in part based on introspection) that it's this intolerable combination of institutional success and the self-doubt born from integrity and insight that helps explain both the bullying and petty dismissive-ness toward alternative approaches that we find in many of our academic leaders (the philosophical enforcers, e.g., Ernest Nagel, Glymour, Geach, etc.) as well as the nauseating and unhealthy applause machines that develop around some philosophers (e.g. Kripke, Cavell, [fill in your local campus hero], etc.). Note that I really think all the folk I have just mentioned are fantastic philosophers. (The phenomena I describe are also common among less fantastic philosophers.)
Is this bullying inevitable, then? In philosophy, we are are lucky enough to live in a period in which feministphilosophers and their allies are valiantly trying to improve the climate for all of us. Their approach has wisely focused on importing best practices and combating known excesses. But the more general problem, that is, how to design academic institutions and incentives that allow for training ourselves to live in an imperfect world and our own imperfection generally, while not sacrificing striving for the ideal(s) remains an urgent task for a humane philosophy. Agassi's piece deserves wider discussion.
*There are interesting exceptions to these rules, but often they involve a very high status supervisor.
** I am deliberately echoing Adam Smith here because (ahum) as I have long thought he pioneered the social epistemology of science.
Thanks. This was very interesting.
Posted by: Benjamin Hill | 02/21/2014 at 02:49 PM
Spot on. I'd only add that the more academia becomes a high stakes game (a few lucky people with good jobs, propped up by hordes of adjuncts), the stronger the bullying incentives.
Posted by: Enzo Rossi | 02/22/2014 at 12:12 AM
Thank you, Enzo. Yes, incentives and distribution(s) of rewards matter. But disincentives (publicity, reputation, lawsuits, etc.) are also evolving.
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 02/22/2014 at 12:19 AM
Not to be terribly 19th-century about it all, but do modern academics have anything to say or relate about a "sense of mission" in science or philosophy? Or is that way, way over and it it is simply eyes-roll now, and onward to the continued extraction of wealth from the state via demonstrations of intellectuality?
Posted by: Avi Metcalfe | 02/26/2014 at 03:19 PM