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SCIENCE_ENVY

                                             May 21, 2012


                                 May 24, 2012, "New York Review of Books"
                                 Anthony T. Grafton "Can the Colleges Be
                                 Saved?", a review of Andrew Delbanco's
                                 "College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be"

  Grafton summarizing Delbaco:

  "A governing scientific ideal, which
  emphasizes the ongoing transformation of
  all fields of knowledge, relegates the         Possibly, this is the reason
  transmission of knowledge to at best a         there are occasional flare-ups
  secondary status.  Humanists, whose            of fads in the humanities,
  subjects do not show progress--  ...           ala the post-modernism
  are marginalized in academic life unless       obsession: they're trying to
  they adopt a kind of parody of the             mimic scientific revolutions.
  scientific method, and begin tabulating
  all the forms of plot used in Victorian               FRYING_CRITICISM
  novels as if they were a literary
  counterpart to the human genome."               It often seems to me that
                                                  some of the drive behind
                                                  anti-technology movements
                                                  (ala some versions of
          This closing remark is                  environmentalism) has to
          funny but I think somewhat              do with the frustrations
          unfair to our Distant                   of people who feel left out.
          Readers.  Facts actually
          matter, even in the
          humanities.

              HOW_SOFT_A_WHISPER



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