Dean of the Faculty
Speeches & Articles
"What's Interesting" Linfield College Convocation
September 2005
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There are, of course, many disciplines, but I would suggest – tentatively – that they pretty much boil down to four; or rather, that they reflect four broad manners of thinking – four meta-disciplines – four kinds of disciplined, systematic thought. First, there is scientific thought, which is, to my mind, largely what we do when we think about cause and effect. To analyze the world in terms of what causes what, and to systematize those causes, is pretty much what it means to do science. Could be natural science, could be social science, could be psychological science, but in each case the goal is to account for, and establish laws of, causation. Very different from this is the analysis of images as images. An image is a kind of picture of things – a mental picture, a physical picture – that typically evokes, in our minds, other images, other pictures. The analysis of images is, roughly, literary analysis, including in the category of literature not simply written literature, but also visual literature – painting, sculptor, architecture, film, television. We’re not talking here about scientific cause and effect, but about how to interpret, how to characterize the images contained in a work of art. Different from both of these is historical analysis, which I understand to be the analysis of events existing in time with a view toward understanding their significance. The primary goal of the historian is not to describe an event, nor to explain its cause, but to render it, as one historian has put it, an "intelligible occurrence." Presumably, the historian does this, at least in part, by placing the event in its proper context, i.e., by describing the complex structure of proximate events that compose its setting or background. There is, finally, philosophical analysis. Here we have the analysis of concepts themselves. What does a particular concept really mean, and what does it imply? If we have one particular concept, what other concepts must we have if we are to be coherent, if we are to make sense?
I don’t necessarily propose this to be a complete list. It is inspired, very roughly, by some things that the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott, once said. My point, however, is to illustrate what I think is essential to a liberal arts education. And there are at least two reasons why learning how to think might be interesting.
First, I would suggest that learning how to think, pursuing the liberal arts, becoming liberally educated, might be one of those things that is, so to speak, its own reward. There are a number of things like that. Friendship is one. Friendship is inherently rewarding; it is simply a good thing in itself. And if you approach friendship in a different way – if you approach friendship primarily for ulterior purposes, as a kind of utilitarian way of getting things – you thereby instantly ruin the friendship. If my friend is using me for his or her own ulterior purposes, he or she is no longer my friend. We enjoy our friendships simply because they are internally rewarding, on their own, without any necessary external payoff. I would commend to you the perhaps quaint idea that being educated has that same feature of being intrinsically valuable. Whether or not it gets you riches, power, position, fame, or what have you, it seems to me that being educated describes an inherently rewarding state of being.
Second, I do, however, think that being educated can also have some good consequences. Consider Steve Jobs. A great man. A genius. Massively influential. But this stuff about the fonts bothers me a bit. I use an Apple computer. I have a standard issue package. And I note that my standard issue package offers me no less than 128 fonts. They’re beautiful, no doubt about it. And they’re amazing. But in all the years that I’ve been using my succession of Macintosh’s, I’m quite certain that I’ve never used more than five of those fonts – and most of the variation there as been by accident. I really don’t see why I would need more than one or two or, at most, three. Some people certainly do need more; but a great many – I’d say the vast majority – don’t. I informally polled my colleagues the other day, and all of them, without exception, said that they rarely if ever used more than one or two fonts. So we have all these computers, with all these fonts, taking up all that memory, costing all that money – someone, I suppose, had to program them, someone had to install them, someone has to maintain them, presumably some substantial resources of some kind went into providing all those fonts for all those computers – and all of it is largely going to waste. Was that really the best use of those resources? Does that make for the best computer? The Mac is very expensive, after all. Could font promiscuity be one example of the kind of thing, multiplied many times over, that perhaps gives the Mac somewhat less expected utility – less efficiency – than it might have? And could this be the result, at least in part, of a glorious, obsessive, inspired, enormously powerful but, in another sense, unfocused, chaotic, undisciplined mind that chose to study only those things that seemed superficially to be interesting, and that fails to recognize that every mind can and should come to appreciate the fact that everything is interesting?
Well perhaps that’s something for you to think about; and if you do, I suggest that you try to think about it in a disciplined way.
Of course, this is a dark day. I know that all of our hearts go out to our brothers and sisters who are suffering so horribly in New Orleans, in Mississippi, in Alabama. And our hearts also go out to our brothers and sisters – fellow human beings – who have suffered from today’s horrific events in Baghdad. But it is, in another sense, a joyous day. For me, at least, the beginning of an academic year is always a joyous time. I’m still a cynic; but insofar as there is any hope, surely at least some of it is to be found in education.
Thanks so much for listening to me. My hearty congratulations to Marv Henberg. And I hope that you all have a terrific academic year.
