
The Shrinking World of Ideas - diodorus
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shrinking-World-of-Ideas/150141/
======
niels_olson
Meh. There have never been more ideas than there are today. The inability of
the tweed-jacketed offspring of the wealthy, living their noblesse oblige in
the self-imposed poverty of humanities, are struggling with the reflections in
the mirror:

-their theories aren't changing the world as fast as they want

-they didn't study the hard sciences that would allow them to understand the theories that are changing the world.

The older I get, the more I see this: outside of the young men whom the
society annoints "whiz kids", the entire culture seems paralyzed by fear of
math and science.

That's surely a generalization. I know at least one old classmate who's a
quantitative historian and quite gainfully employed. But how many people are
going into history for the quantitative angle?

Don't get me wrong, I think the humanities are important. But those who choose
this route have got to level up if they want to play.

~~~
gloriousduke
And yet, isn't one of the premiere goals of science, at least of the sort
aiming at ontology, i.e. physics, to formulate a "Theory of Everything"? In
other words, one idea to rule them all? Of course such an idea probably won't
explain "higher level" structures in the Universe without some additional
"subroutines"—just like understanding the periodic table does not result in
instantaneous explanation of biochemistry, the brain, or human society (funny,
maybe natural selection does something of the sort...). Though I do not fully
agree with everything here, and I'm not sure that the author is wholly
maligning the state of affairs in his thesis, we should remember there is a
degree of immunity to ultra-logical semiotics in literature and (continental)
philosophy that imparts subjective states that reinforce one's humanity (and
maybe even intangibly touches holy-grail-ontology), and that is by no means an
endorsement of at best childish, at worst deleterious, obfuscation.

~~~
yid
> we should remember there is a degree of immunity to ultra-logical semiotics
> in literature and (continental) philosophy that imparts subjective states
> that reinforce one's humanity (and maybe even intangibly touches holy-grail-
> ontology), and that is by no means an endorsement of at best childish, at
> worst deleterious, obfuscation.

Can you honestly say that you wrote this sentence in order to be understood
widely?

~~~
gloriousduke
> Can you honestly say that you wrote this sentence in order to be understood
> widely?

I can't say I didn't. But perhaps my subconscious finally prodded me to go
beyond lurking and post my first comment so as to ensure I engage with the
masses and thereby improve the clarity of my hermetically sealed self
expression. So let me rephrase that: Stuff like great novels and the writings
of Nietzsche can make you feel as alive as when you consider the findings from
the LHC or read the "Selfish Gene". That being said, I think we should use the
ideas of science, and philosophy of science, to improve our art and make it
more meaningful and fecund for ideas. Since the results of science have no
intrinsic meaning at this point in time (nor do they say anything utterly
conclusive about what really exists at the lowest level of ontology), we still
need something else. Obfuscation is one way to encourage the reader to really
understand the context and layers of some piece of writing by making them dig
deeper (there was an interesting link about this a few weeks back).

~~~
nitrogen
_Since the results of science have no intrinsic meaning at this point in time
(nor do they say anything utterly conclusive about what really exists at the
lowest level of ontology), we still need something else._

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "intrinsic" in this context? Also,
does there have to be an absolute lowest level of anything?

~~~
gloriousduke
The answer to the first question is related to an interpretation of David Hume
known as Hume's Law, paraphrased as, "you can't derive an ought from an is".
In other words, the results of science cannot tell us anything _conclusive_
about ethics/morality or what we should do day to day. The submission
contained the following quote regarding neuroscience from a well-regarded
paper: "it 'can help us see that all behavior is mechanical, that all behavior
is produced by chains of physical events that ultimately reach back to forces
beyond the agent’s control.'" Some pretty drastic changes to the rule of law
could result from equating such results with "there is no free will". How do
we decide what _ought_ to comprise such changes? Secondly, as exhilarating and
awe inspiring as learning the results of science can be (for me at least), how
do we take knowledge and do anything with it? We can use it for technology,
sure. But what if tomorrow we conclusively determine there are
extraterrestrial beings through the results of one of our scientific
instruments? How does society respond in relation to what the discovery means
to each person despite the fact the experiment says nothing about such
meaning? You could also think of it all this way: what _ought_ we to do once
we know every possible provable (or Popperian falsifiable) statement about
existence?

As for the second question, to me, it makes sense that there has to be a
lowest level of ontology, unless the lowest level is some sort of recursive
structure (which in a sense would still be a "lowest level thing"). I believe
most of us expect that there is some sort of monadic entity that is equivalent
to Democritus's atom. In the standard model the quark is that sort of thing
(if I'm not mistaken), but the string theorists hypothesize that a lower level
(think more complete, i.e. not assuming zero dimensional entities in reality)
object is the basis for a quark. Or say, if we can somehow determine our
universe is a simulation, then it would be nice to know what the "basement
universe" that is running this universe is. Of course, it's possible such
knowledge will remain forever inaccessible, in which case, we'll probably need
novels and philosophy to deal with the voids left in our hungering minds.

~~~
maroonblazer
>the results of science cannot tell us anything conclusive about
ethics/morality or what we should do day to day.

It depends on how you define "science". If construed broadly, to mean using
reason and evidence-based approaches to evaluating claims, then science tells
us a lot. Is it better for the nations of Europe to strive to live in mutual
cooperation with each other? Or should they instead perpetually wage war
against each other, at any cost? Imagine posing that question to both pre- and
post-enlightenment peoples and contrasting the responses.

>Or say, if we can somehow determine our universe is a simulation, then it
would be nice to know what the "basement universe" that is running this
universe is. Of course, it's possible such knowledge will remain forever
inaccessible, in which case, we'll probably need novels and philosophy to deal
with the voids left in our hungering minds.

Science is presently the best cure for the voids that exist today. You'll need
a really good argument for switching to novels and philosophy for the voids of
the future.

~~~
gloriousduke
>using reason and evidence-based approaches to evaluating claims

It takes some philosophy to decide how to do science. I prefer Popper's
approach for the methodology.

>Or should they instead perpetually wage war against each other, at any cost?

I think we answer this question via the realization that every human is a
subjective being and has a right to pursue happiness, a realization which
comes from the humanities (a-hem) as much as it does from the theory of
natural selection or quantum mechanics (and actually, we have no way of
looking at a brain and saying it assuredly causes consciousness, so we can't
even say who's a subjective being with science). Heck, the universe's "way of
doing" might be a nearby gamma ray burst far harsher than any human war ;)

>You'll need a really good argument for switching to novels and philosophy for
the voids of the future.

I wholeheartedly concur, but there are already concerns that if something like
the multiverse is the "explanation" for the constant values in our universe,
then there might be aspects of existence inaccessible to our experiments. I
will need much consolation if such a thing is true.

------
ilaksh
Philosophy is the precursor to science. It is relatively primitive, unfocused,
untestable. Maybe still interesting though in terms of its ability to tie
together ideas different scientific fields without so much "rigour". That is
really more a weakness of science though.

You need to separate literature from philosophy. There certainly are today and
have been recently some excellent novels with interesting ideas in them. But
for someone to pay large amounts of money to study novels or poetry or even
history -- even the most privileged groups are expected to have practical
skills and knowledge in a consulting position or running a company.

The relative lack of interest in politics, morality, better social
organization, etc. I believe you can attribute to a few things. First, there
is less hardship than in previous eras, which means fewer critics of social
structure. There is also a relatively strong control over public (and private,
to a degree) education that is reinforced by a powerful propaganda machine.

But the critics and ideas are out there. They are harder to find.

------
zdw
This is fundamentally a "biological sciences are eating everything" piece -
that we can explain all of the human experience through a bunch of biochemical
reactions in our grey matter, and thus working on philosophy in other ways
(making models and assertions experientially) is no longer a valid way to get
to truth.

I'd argue that doing a biochemical reverse engineering of even one person's
brains is impractical, and more likely to tell you about their food or
companionship preferences than anything profound.

Just like newtonian mechanics is still useful in the age of quantum mechanics,
classical philosophy and religion is still valuable, well tested, and
empirically useful, even if it isn't verifiably true, as making a verifiable
answer is far beyond (and likely will remain far beyond) our current
capabilities.

~~~
venomsnake
What do you mean by - religion is well tested?

~~~
wavefunction
I think we have pretty good test-coverage, even if all the tests are still
failing instead of ever passing once.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Trouble is, sometimes coincidences occur. Humans are born to fasten onto
faulty cause-and-effect relationships; its what kept us from being eaten by
tigers a million years ago - "Og saw a stripey cat; today we found him dead.
Stripey cats are bad news". And today its responsible for witchcraft, voodoo,
the lottery, you name it.

~~~
wavefunction
Indeed, I have no religious faith but I find its emergence in the human psyche
endlessly interesting.

------
westoncb
The author proposes that the humanities are no longer the fertile source of
important ideas they once were, and attributes this, somewhat vaguely (the
vagueness appropriately matches available information sources on the subject,
though), to the humanities fumbling somewhat in the past 40 years or so with
certain trends they pushed; to the progress of their analysis perhaps
inevitably leading to a direct study of the human mind, which is more expertly
carried out by cognitive scientists; and to the general, unaccounted for,
contemporary success of science.

It seems more likely to me that differences in society's communication
structure and regular inability to determine who intellectual leaders are
except retrospectively, are the main causes for the changes described by the
author. Aside from that, there's probably more of a shift in what the author
now considers an important idea than anything: the humanities and sciences
address different subject matters. Scientific discoveries often serve to
restrict the realm of viable philosophies (e.g. cognitive science's impact on
the any theory of innate knowledge a la Plato), but if it ever says something
positive on a philosophical subject, that subject is no longer philosophy
proper—and there's plenty of room for philosophy still.

The rest of the humanities, from my understanding, is about communicating
ideas about human life—often times about the experience of living it—using a
different set of techniques than the sciences, and the utility of those
techniques has not diminished.

------
allendoerfer
I want to add, that many great ideas are identified as such years after they
have been formulated. Sometimes only the historical context makes an idea
great. Kafka died in 1924, years before the NS regime took over, which
bureaucracy he illustrated so brilliantly. All his writings were published
after his death. So the ideas clearly were present before, they just stayed
unnoticed and only in hindsight became famous for the fact, that there were
indeed people who knew better before and the catastrophe could have been
avoided.

The past is always glorified or at least seen as more significant, because
only these parts stick. Its harder to spot a significant piece in real time,
because the signal to noise is much worse.

~~~
xamuel
Minor correction: you meant to say all his _novels_ were published after his
death. Kafka published quite a few short stories while still alive (including
short stories which would later become parts of his three novels).

------
CuriouslyC
I find it ironic that an article that has obviously been painstakingly crafted
by someone who by accounts is a highly capable writer should be so poor at
communicating ideas. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising, my experience has
generally been that philosophers and literary theorists tend to more
interested in demonstrating their adroitness through linguistic gymnastics and
obscure references than creating end-products with intrinsic value.

~~~
nemo
It's strange, I found it very clear and readable. Maybe it has to do with
one's level of familiarity with the topic, though.

------
jckt
The source on "7.6 percent of bachelor’s degrees were granted in the
humanities in 2010" seems flimsy. The Chronicle links to the NYT, and the NYT
links to a blog (and not even a specific post). The numbers here[1] I think
are trustworthy. For those who can't be bothered, it says 16.8% of all
Bachelors' conferred in 2010 -- more than double 7.6% (and according to the
same source, around the same as that in the 70s). So I don't know if the
liberal arts "are not where the action is these days". There's certainly still
a lot of people going into them.

[1]
[http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.as...](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.asp)

------
dirktheman
I don't agree. There's no constraint, no limit in 'ideas to come up with'. Not
like, say music. There are only 10 octaves in the audible spectrum, but that
doesn't stop people from coming up with new songs and melodies for the last
couple of centuries.

Because executing an idea has never been cheaper and more accessible, it might
seem that we're running out of fresh ideas. But as technology evolves, so are
the ideas that go with it. I'm betting on an intergalactic ridesharing app for
space monkeys somewhere in the next decade...

------
qthrul
Technology is the response to a perceived need.

Science is that which explains and predicts.

See also Kuhn's paradigm shift, etc...

