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KNOWS_SOMETHING

                                              February 16, 2007

  It's a phrase that comes back
  to me in different forms on
  many occasions:

     "But does this guy really
      know anything?"

     The point is that many people
     work in a given field because
     they want to be someone who          The essayist that
     works in that field, though          knows how to write
     they may not be bringing             essays, and can do so
     anything to the work outside         without any ideas to
     of a certain degree of               speak of.
     surface competency.
                                              The poet that strings
                                              words together in sort-
                                              of-interesting ways,
                                              but isn't really trying
                                              to get at anything
                                              in particular beyond that.


         Often, for me, the question
         "Does this guy really know
         anything?" really means          That's not a popular attitude
         something like "Do they have     with a typical humanist, many
         any technological or             of whom have reason to be
         scientific understanding?"       sensitive about this.

                                               Rabid dismissals of
           Though of course,                   C.P. Snow's "Two
           there's also many a                 Cultures" essay are
           techie that needs to                reasonably common... but
           learn that everything               he really did have a
           of importance can not               point: there's something
           be spelled out with                 fundamentally crazy
           mathematic precision.               about an "intellectual"
                                               that doesn't understand
                                               anything about, say,
                                               thermodynamics.

                                                            TWO_CULTS




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