On the PGR Rankings in 17th century

As regular readers of D&I know, despite serious methodological misgivings, I defend the utility of PGR (on relatively narrow grounds), and participated in the PGR report. I am a product of the PGR ecology (see here for more on this terminology), but I am employed outside of it. I participated in 17th century, 18th century (prior to Kant), and philosophy of social science specialist rankings as well as with the generalist rankings. I wrote about my experiences here. The debate continues and hopefully more rankings are being developed; it is healthy that there is public debate.  

The rankings in one of the areas I helped evaluate, in "Early Modern Philosophy: 17th Century," are now available. It turns out there were eighteen evaluators: Roger Ariew, John Carriero, Andrew Chignell, Michael Della Rocca, Lisa Downing, Daniel Garber, Don Garrett, Michael Gill, Dan Kaufman, Michael LeBuffe, Martin Lin, Antonia LoLordo, Yitzhak Melamed, John Morrison, Alan Nelson, Eric Schliesser, Eric Watkins, Kenneth Winkler. Of these I am the only one employed outside the PGR (although Le Buffe works and lives the furthest average distance from everybody).

That there are only two females in this ranking is shocking given the large number of world class female scholars in the field (some of these are also implicitly highly ranked in the PGR). The lack of female participation may have also subtly skewed the results. For, a lot of the most exciting work in the area is in the recovery of female early modern philosophers (including, in the seventeenth century, Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, etc.). Few people active in that recovery, including some of the leading men, are actually in this particular pool of evaluators. That I have become somewhat active recently in that recovery enterprise means that I have also grown more familiar with the scholarship in the area; this helped me not just recognize some names that previously would have only caused vague recognition, but helped me evaluate their status with better judgment. Looking at the rankings I doubt that strength in this recovery project has gone rewarded.

In fact, the evaluator pool is tightly knit. Many I know personally: one (Garber) is my own supervisor (he also supervised Martin Lin [Garrett and Della Roca have a former student each in the pool]), and most of these rankers, I see at least once a year or every other year (some of which I kibbitz more regularly with on facebook). I was a bit surprised to see a non-tenured person, but I am not sure how unusual that is. The group is undoubtedly eminently qualified; even so, I admire Eric Watkins and Michael Gill (with whom I will be co-organizing Hume 2016 in Sydney!) greatly, but I don’t think of either as a seventeenth century person, although both have published in the area and are well connected in the discipline. The group seems reasonably balanced between so-called ‘contextualists’ and those more inclined toward varieties of ‘rational reconstruction.’

Having said that, while eminent, the group is unbalanced in various subtle ways: while early modernists tend to be fairly broad, working on more than one figure and more than one issue, the vast majority of this group works primarily on M&E related stuff rather than moral philosophy (Gill and LeBuffe are the main exceptions)—this  may have been normal a decade (or two) ago, but now looks idiosyncratic. There are no specialists on Bacon or, more surprising, Hobbes (yes, I know, a few of us have published papers on Bacon or Hobbes)—despite the fact that there has been an explosion of recent scholarship on Hobbes (and to some extent Bacon) and political philosophy more generally (yes, a few of us in this group have published papers on political theology); it also contains no Arnauld nor Malebranche experts (and is narrow on Newton). Apologies if I am missing somebody's expertise. (By ‘expert’ I mean regularly publishes papers and books in the area—a natural referee for work in the field. So, for example, I have published a paper or two on Berkeley, but I am no Berkeley expert in the way that Ken Winkler is!) Eyeballing it, there are five Descartes experts (Roger Ariew, John Carriero, Daniel Garber, Alan Nelson, Kaufman); depending on how you count, six to nine Spinoza experts: (Michael Della Rocca, Michael LeBuffe, Martin Lin, Yitzhak Melamed, John Morrison, Don Garrett, as well as Garber, Carriero, and Nelson, not counting Schliessser); and four Locke scholars (Lisa Downing, Antonia LoLordo (who, of course, is also a Gassendi scholar), Dan Kaufman, Kenneth Winkler)). Given his importance in the field, Leibniz is obviously under-represented (Garber is the only ‘big-Leibniz-name’ in the group, although a few others have published papers on or translations of Leibniz). Obviously, you can nitpick about some of this—a few of us teach regular graduate seminars in an area without publishing much in it (etc.).

Given the centrality to the field of about half of these evaluators (as editors, tenure and promotion referees, and workshop hosts), some of these imbalances don’t matter much in practice. The top-12 are all extremely fine departments with superb early modern scholars (although I would have expected Toronto to do better because they have quality and quantity). Even so, imbalances in the evaluation pool might explain some patterns of oversight. (No, no, I am not going to offer a list of overrated departments!) So, for example, while Sydney is ranked in philosophy of physics (can anybody explain why?), it is not ranked in 17th century at all while having four (!) early modernists on staff with strengths not just in HPS, but also feminism. At Bostun University there is deep strengths in seventeenth century moral and political philosophy (including Hobbes and Spinoza) and feminism; it is also not rewarded in the rankings. If I were at King’s I would be baffled that having quite a few very fine early modernists on staff does not pay off more in the PGR ranking.

So bottom line: the ranking give a good snap-snot of what some of the discipline’s specialist-heavies think about the relative rankings in the field. Their joint verdict (including mine) is sensible. Even so, in my view the group is a bit more conservative than the field and I suspect it has missed some important up-and-comers who are already shaping the field, including work on the history of female contributions to philosophy. Strengths in moral and political as well as HPS also seems to have been under-rewarded. And if you approach early modern from a Deleuzian perspective you are probably not surprised to be ignored.

Comments

[Margaret Atherton]

On the other hand, the specialty rankings are supposed to be rankings not just lists of departments where there are people doing good and interesting work. Everyone of the departments that appear on the rankings have people working in early modern whose work I admire and do my best to keep up with. But the groups, to be honest,appears to me to be entirely random. I have no intuition that explains to me why the people in the departments so ranked should be in one group rather than another. I agree with Eric that there are notable omissions, but I am also troubled by the unmotivated nature of this enterprise.

[Aaron Garrett]

King's is a massive oversight. Between Antognazza, Reid, and Milton they have three of the finest early modernists in their respective areas I know. Maria Rosa and Jasper's recent books are to my mind also two of the most important books in early modern in a long time. Maria Rosa's has been justly celebrated. Jasper's has been overlooked a bit, due to the fact it is on an unfashionable figure, but it is a groundbreaking work that reshuffles our understanding of the period. I can't imagine anywhere much better to go.

[Aaron Garrett]

And I even forgot Thomas Pink!