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PUBLIC_SCIENTIST

                                             March  28, 2013
                                             August 21, 2013

                                         http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/feb/14/the-triumph-of-stephen-jay-gould/?pagination=false

Richard C. Lewontin, writing in the                    LAST_INTELLECTUALS
NYRB on Feb 14, 2008, uses the
phrase "public intellectual" in ways      It's perhaps the most enduring
distinctly at odds with Jacoby: for       influence of Jacoby's "The Last
Lewontin, a "public intellectual" is      Intellectuals": academics seem
someone like Stephen Jay Gould, an        to have taken it as a special
academic that does popular science        rebuke, a challenge to publish
writing.                                  in more popular venues.

And he also praises Gould for                           And recently blogs have
not straying too far from his                           proven a ready venue.
field of expertise in his
popular work.

       So much for the PI as
       "generalist", a man
       without a territory       And so much for Posner's critique
       to defend.                that Gould strayed *too far* from
                                 his field...
   I wonder if Lewontin was
   doing this on purpose,                 IS_POT_BLACKNESS_HEREDITARY
   deviating thoroughly from
   Jacoby without even
   bothering to state this
   explicitly: a double rebuke.    Lewontin, after all, is one
                                   of the many cases that
                                   Jacoby chose to overlook in
                                   his intellectual history.

Lewontin, praises Gould (and                            Ignoring Vanevar Bush
elsewhere, Sagan, and my                                looks particularly
implication, himself) for                               silly, in retrospect...
sticking to their home beats:                           but perhaps, mainly
                                                        in retrospect.
  "... His success as a public intellectual
  did not seduce him into extending himself
  far beyond his professional competence and
  rigor in the service of some general theory
  of human nature or history or the invention
  of some overarching principle or direction
  in the sweep of evolution ..."

Also, by implication, this is a critique
of people like Chomsky (who he also
mentions) and E.O. Wilson (who perhaps
deserves it more).

                           Lewontin's version of the PI is that
                           they are mostly academics, who came into
                           their own post-bomb, in 1945.  They're
                           people who work both inside and outside
                           their academic specialty.

                                He makes the point that the upswing
                                in university funding from technical
                                research funded the expansion of
                                college facilities for other fields.

                                    (Which perhaps makes it clear that
                                    he's out to rub the humanities
                                    noses in their own inferiority...)







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