A passage from an interview with Freeman Dyson:
Stewart Brand: One of the things I got from Infinite in All Directions – it was a delight to me, and I’ve been quoting it ever since – is that you honor inventors as much as scientists.
Freeman Dyson: It’s as great a part of the human adventure to invent things as to understand them. John Randall wasn’t a great scientist, but he was a great inventor. There’s been lots more like him, and it’s a shame they don’t get Nobel Prizes.
Stewart Brand: Is it the scientists who are putting them down?
Freeman Dyson: Yes. There is this snobbism among scientists, especially the academic types.
Stewart Brand: Are there other kinds?
Freeman Dyson: There are scientists in industry who are a bit more broad-minded. The academics look down on them, too.
Stewart Brand: Is that a weird British hangover?
Freeman Dyson: It’s even worse in Germany. Intellectual snobbery is a worldwide disease. It certainly was very bad in China and probably held back development there by 2,000 years.
Stewart Brand: How would you stop this intellectual snobbery?
Freeman Dyson: I would abolish the PhD system. The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don’t have PhDs.
Stewart Brand: Are those getting PhDs rewarded in any other way than as an honor?
Freeman Dyson: It’s much more than an honor. It’s a ticket to a job.
Stewart Brand: So is anybody buying this? Are PhDs being abolished or disregarded?
Freeman Dyson: No. The stranglehold has gotten even tighter over the years. It’s become essentially like the MD – with much less justification. It’s simply a barrier you have to climb over before you can make a career, and it’s being imposed on more and more jobs. At even the smallest liberal arts college, nowadays, they say with pride, “All of our faculty have PhDs.” Many of the best teachers are thrown out because they don’t have a PhD. It’s a paper qualification that poisons the whole field.
I strongly suggest that you read the whole interview.
__________
Source:
Stewart Brand, Freeman Dyson’s Brain, Wired, Feb. 1998.
Tags: Academia, Freeman Dyson, Snobbery, Zeitgeist
June 5, 2012 at 13:55 |
Even if the times are different, I completely agree with Dyson in principle. And I think he has proved himself as an inventor / engineer (think Triga reactors or Orion), scientist, mathematician, humanist, writer, poet… all without a PhD.
I remember he talks about this a lot in “Scientist as Rebel” too. If you haven’t read this already, an old article (not much on this theme but as eloquent as it can get).
June 7, 2012 at 09:21 |
That article on Edge is an all-time favorite of mine. I read it back in September 2009, I believe, back when I was really interested in Thomas Gold’s work on abiogenesis of oil.
Dyson is a treasure of Mankind. He’s probably my greatest intellectual hero right now. He surpassed you-know-who.
June 5, 2012 at 14:00 |
Given his stature, I realize that my comment “he has proved himself” might come across as silly. But EACH TIME I am always astounded by the breadth of his contributions. Every book of his that I read completely changed the way I looked at what he was talking about. He’s a hero!
February 11, 2013 at 15:12 |
Academics are thugs, thieves, and cons. They harvest ideas they learn from others and compile them. They memorize. They research. The regurgitate. They do not create. The real experts are the ones living it. Whatever “it” is. From inventing high tech toys to surviving poverty. Whatever academics study, is stolen through observing others. They steal the essence and play “it” off as their own ideation.
February 12, 2013 at 10:07 |
It’s not my blog, but feel compelled to write. 90-95% of just about any set is trash (academics? engineers? writers? movies? “science”?), thus you are just betraying your bitterness by targeting a specific set. If you only see the 95% and the attitude they carry, fail to see the top percentile and attribute one set of judgements on the other you perhaps need to reconsider your assumptions, otherwise good luck handling it.