[lbo-talk] Re: Powerless Religious Right?

Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org
Wed Sep 15 19:45:04 PDT 2004


On Sep 15, 2004, at 4:04 PM, BklynMagus wrote:


> But why is there a schism between these two types of writing?
> Why reward people for producing work that is not understandable
> and of little use to anyone outside of a small circle?

A lot of it is probably due to humanities (and social science) types slavishly imitating the hard sciences -- getting really "technical" to prove that they are as smart and as skillful at doing "research" as the physicists, chemists, and biologists.

Also, the academic world is by nature a small circle -- advancing your career is done by impressing your peers in that circle. The outside world has nothing to say about it.

That said, there are of course a number of outstanding exceptions -- the Chomster comes to mind.

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax



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