Today’s essay is part of a new series including me, Latham Turner, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. In the past we’ve written about trust, fatherhood, recovery, work, and home
Like his mentor—and rare for an academic (even if "recovering")—Josh knows how to make his prose sing. Said another way, he knows how to construct an actual argument in language that's also evocative, poetic, and vulnerable.
I'm no academic but I do also recognize and decry the tearing down of professional scholarship, science, and logic, and their replacement with cadres of the sort of "paraprofessionals" that many have come to consider 'quite likely to do a better job' than people with real training, as Marc Andreeseen put it on a recent episode of Honestly with Bari Weiss.
As someone who gave academia a shot or two myself though, I do also understand the frustration with the red tape wrapped around and through the guts of the ivory tower, and the desire to move more quickly, following emotion and intuition instead of rigorous intellect.
Josh is looking straight into the mirror and asking the hard questions here. It'll be interesting to see what answers emerge.
Yes, there are many inefficiencies. And I suppose some of those delays have been baked into peer review from the start, though they are, if anything, getting worse.
You highlight the conundrum well: expertise, logic, and knowledge integrity matter. We used to trust universities for these things. I'm not sure that trust is warranted now, but it's hard to know who else is offering something worthwhile. Moving fast and breaking things is not good enough.
Thanks for reading so carefully. Look forward to your installment later this week.
“It’s hard to create new knowledge. Sometimes your epiphany isn’t new, no matter how fresh it feels to you.”
I’ve been noodling this idea that there’s nothing new under the sun—only new angles and new views. The feeling of Deja Vu when you arrive at something new yet strangely familiar.
I admire your steadfast commitment to holding yourself to a higher standard and your thoughtful criticism of the status quo. I’m often left with a different way of thinking about a situation after our exchanges. It’s so easy for me, and I believe many others, to go with the flow rather than row against it. But the world needs people like yourself who ask the tough questions. Keep going, my friend.
Thanks, Lyle! Sometimes beating against the current isn't really a choice, even if it a little wearying. Looking forward to what you come up with later this week.
Beautiful! Such a joy to read someone trained in the humanities. Such a contrast to the sciences. I’ll never understand how everyone was convinced that the humanities are useless and business (which shouldn’t even be a discipline!) is somehow the highest function of an education.
Thanks, Liya! I actually see many affinities between the scientific method and literary scholarship. What are the differences you see? There are some science-based approaches to business, but Substack is a good example of how revenue has a weak relationship to truth. In fact, the scholarly method might be said to have diminishing monetary returns on a platform like this until it reaches a certain scale. But I think I and many others are content to play the longer game and even learn to be content with a smaller coterie rather than chase flashier, but more fleeting, gains.
Oh, I meant simply in terms of prose! The prose/voice of someone trained in the humanities is such a joy to read compared to the (social) sciences. I enjoyed your description of the research process. Social/science papers can be so clunky, so focused on the mechanics. Few voices sing.
That makes sense! Ironically, the sterile scientific voice is fairly recent, and even the first clinicians (many of them French) did in fact write lovely prose. Xavier Bichat's medical treatises are quite literary. Same for Paracelsus, the alchemist and pioneer of medical chemistry, and for the Hippocratic physicians, who borrowed rhetorical techniques from the great orators, the Sophists. Galileo also wrote beautifully.
A really fascinating essay Josh and a truly moving portrait of your mentor.
I talk to a lot of scientists for my current work and it's clear there are many issues arund publication similar to the ones you describe. But also the basic motivation, to create knowledge, is just the same.
Thank you! Yes, the core of the sciences and the humanities have a great deal in common. This has been lost in the STEM craze and the zero sum competition for resources in the corporatized university. But the great French physiologist Claude Bernard wrote in one of his journals, "Physiology, physiology, you are mine." I have known many literary scholars who might say the same about their discipline or their particular niche. There is an unrelenting idealism at the core of the enterprise. Without it, a university makes very little sense except as a credentialing machine.
Thank you, Mark. Your truffle-sniffing pig in a parking lot metaphor has stuck with me. As another friend told me, the thing for such a pig to do is to get out of the parking lot. But I expect it was different for your father and his cohort.
Very good essay on a number of counts. Well written (my first criterion because I generally stop reading when it isn’t), but also well argued. It IS worrying what seems to be happening in academia. As you may know, I have a PhD but chose a different route, but am married to a retired academic economist and the mother of a current English professor. Our grandson has all the hallmarks of an academic-to-be ( arguer, wonderful logic etc) but my husband says he would not encourage anyone to that profession these days for much the reasons you give. Very saddening.
I share your husband's assessment. College is still the price of admission for many careers, but higher ed in its current state is a terrible career choice for the young. The only way it makes sense is if someone has the resources for a Plan B. I suppose there are still a few lottery winners who land the tenure-track roles and amass enough clout to protect some boundaries for their creative work or research. But increasingly those lucky few are subsidized by many who fall lower in the pyramid scheme.
My 25 year old daughter is a recent university graduate in biology and has now published two articles in peer-reviewed journals. What I found interesting in this process is to learn that in biology, articles awaiting peer review can now optionally be read in "pre-print" form (un-vetted if you will) on a site hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This is done so that other researchers can have earlier access to what's being done in the field, without the peer-review delay that you mention can last several years. The site is referred to as "bio-archive" and I think fills a useful niche for that branch of scholarship. It doesn't help in terms of getting tenure necessarily, since the articles haven't been given the official stamp of a respected journal, but this does seems to fill a gap in terms of timeliness.
Really interesting example -- thanks for sharing. I like that idea of a kind of backstage pass, so the work can continue. I still worry about the structures surrounding those labs and the cultures forged within them. But the scholarly spirit -- that quest for knowledge -- does live on in some quarters, and this is a good reminder of that.
Wow Josh. This essay is so moving. Thank you for sharing Sue with us. She is easy to love.
I really like her statement of Assert yourself more. I am weary of reading someone simply quote someone else and call it good. I’m much more interested in why it is good to them.
Thank you, Tey. Sue was/is beloved by many. I suppose it's not subtle at all that my grief about higher ed is bound up in my grief from losing her. It was possible to believe in the enterprise when people like her were in positions of influence.
"A scholar learns to guard against confirmation bias and straw opponents, to read with curiosity rather than a priori judgments. You show all your cards — you never hide the inconvenient footnotes up your sleeve. If you are a scientist, you show your steps so transparently that others can reproduce them, and you take care to make your claims falsifiable."
Good LORD I wish we could get those times back! A time before ideology had captured even science and the humanities. Give me cold, blind rationality and unnamed talent any day! Great piece, Josh. Sue sounds like quite the mentor, and she had to put up with serious old-school sexism. Love what you said about ambition and the marriage between passion and cold-potato rationality.
Thanks, Michael! Yes, I've been thinking about these things as an entrepreneur, how cautious I sometimes am about making bold claims. The standard often is to manifest confidence even when you feel none and, as Open AI is doing, to make raw grabs at market share even as the science or core of the enterprise is under construction. I wonder if think tanks are the future of scholarship, though they come with their own ideological blinders. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to do scholarship solo without access to a true research library.
Like his mentor—and rare for an academic (even if "recovering")—Josh knows how to make his prose sing. Said another way, he knows how to construct an actual argument in language that's also evocative, poetic, and vulnerable.
I'm no academic but I do also recognize and decry the tearing down of professional scholarship, science, and logic, and their replacement with cadres of the sort of "paraprofessionals" that many have come to consider 'quite likely to do a better job' than people with real training, as Marc Andreeseen put it on a recent episode of Honestly with Bari Weiss.
As someone who gave academia a shot or two myself though, I do also understand the frustration with the red tape wrapped around and through the guts of the ivory tower, and the desire to move more quickly, following emotion and intuition instead of rigorous intellect.
Josh is looking straight into the mirror and asking the hard questions here. It'll be interesting to see what answers emerge.
Yes, there are many inefficiencies. And I suppose some of those delays have been baked into peer review from the start, though they are, if anything, getting worse.
You highlight the conundrum well: expertise, logic, and knowledge integrity matter. We used to trust universities for these things. I'm not sure that trust is warranted now, but it's hard to know who else is offering something worthwhile. Moving fast and breaking things is not good enough.
Thanks for reading so carefully. Look forward to your installment later this week.
“It’s hard to create new knowledge. Sometimes your epiphany isn’t new, no matter how fresh it feels to you.”
I’ve been noodling this idea that there’s nothing new under the sun—only new angles and new views. The feeling of Deja Vu when you arrive at something new yet strangely familiar.
Loved your exploration today my friend.
Cather: “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”
Thanks, brother.
of course, even the idea that there's nothing new under the sun isn't new ;)
I admire your steadfast commitment to holding yourself to a higher standard and your thoughtful criticism of the status quo. I’m often left with a different way of thinking about a situation after our exchanges. It’s so easy for me, and I believe many others, to go with the flow rather than row against it. But the world needs people like yourself who ask the tough questions. Keep going, my friend.
Thanks, Lyle! Sometimes beating against the current isn't really a choice, even if it a little wearying. Looking forward to what you come up with later this week.
Beautiful! Such a joy to read someone trained in the humanities. Such a contrast to the sciences. I’ll never understand how everyone was convinced that the humanities are useless and business (which shouldn’t even be a discipline!) is somehow the highest function of an education.
Thanks, Liya! I actually see many affinities between the scientific method and literary scholarship. What are the differences you see? There are some science-based approaches to business, but Substack is a good example of how revenue has a weak relationship to truth. In fact, the scholarly method might be said to have diminishing monetary returns on a platform like this until it reaches a certain scale. But I think I and many others are content to play the longer game and even learn to be content with a smaller coterie rather than chase flashier, but more fleeting, gains.
Oh, I meant simply in terms of prose! The prose/voice of someone trained in the humanities is such a joy to read compared to the (social) sciences. I enjoyed your description of the research process. Social/science papers can be so clunky, so focused on the mechanics. Few voices sing.
That makes sense! Ironically, the sterile scientific voice is fairly recent, and even the first clinicians (many of them French) did in fact write lovely prose. Xavier Bichat's medical treatises are quite literary. Same for Paracelsus, the alchemist and pioneer of medical chemistry, and for the Hippocratic physicians, who borrowed rhetorical techniques from the great orators, the Sophists. Galileo also wrote beautifully.
A really fascinating essay Josh and a truly moving portrait of your mentor.
I talk to a lot of scientists for my current work and it's clear there are many issues arund publication similar to the ones you describe. But also the basic motivation, to create knowledge, is just the same.
Thank you! Yes, the core of the sciences and the humanities have a great deal in common. This has been lost in the STEM craze and the zero sum competition for resources in the corporatized university. But the great French physiologist Claude Bernard wrote in one of his journals, "Physiology, physiology, you are mine." I have known many literary scholars who might say the same about their discipline or their particular niche. There is an unrelenting idealism at the core of the enterprise. Without it, a university makes very little sense except as a credentialing machine.
So good on the connection or Fitzgerald.
Wonderful. So many points of agreement, so many (virtual) check marks in the margins.
If there were more people in academia like you - with your values, your sense of true north - I'd consider going back.
Thank you, Mark. Your truffle-sniffing pig in a parking lot metaphor has stuck with me. As another friend told me, the thing for such a pig to do is to get out of the parking lot. But I expect it was different for your father and his cohort.
Very good essay on a number of counts. Well written (my first criterion because I generally stop reading when it isn’t), but also well argued. It IS worrying what seems to be happening in academia. As you may know, I have a PhD but chose a different route, but am married to a retired academic economist and the mother of a current English professor. Our grandson has all the hallmarks of an academic-to-be ( arguer, wonderful logic etc) but my husband says he would not encourage anyone to that profession these days for much the reasons you give. Very saddening.
I share your husband's assessment. College is still the price of admission for many careers, but higher ed in its current state is a terrible career choice for the young. The only way it makes sense is if someone has the resources for a Plan B. I suppose there are still a few lottery winners who land the tenure-track roles and amass enough clout to protect some boundaries for their creative work or research. But increasingly those lucky few are subsidized by many who fall lower in the pyramid scheme.
My 25 year old daughter is a recent university graduate in biology and has now published two articles in peer-reviewed journals. What I found interesting in this process is to learn that in biology, articles awaiting peer review can now optionally be read in "pre-print" form (un-vetted if you will) on a site hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This is done so that other researchers can have earlier access to what's being done in the field, without the peer-review delay that you mention can last several years. The site is referred to as "bio-archive" and I think fills a useful niche for that branch of scholarship. It doesn't help in terms of getting tenure necessarily, since the articles haven't been given the official stamp of a respected journal, but this does seems to fill a gap in terms of timeliness.
https://www.biorxiv.org/
Really interesting example -- thanks for sharing. I like that idea of a kind of backstage pass, so the work can continue. I still worry about the structures surrounding those labs and the cultures forged within them. But the scholarly spirit -- that quest for knowledge -- does live on in some quarters, and this is a good reminder of that.
Wow Josh. This essay is so moving. Thank you for sharing Sue with us. She is easy to love.
I really like her statement of Assert yourself more. I am weary of reading someone simply quote someone else and call it good. I’m much more interested in why it is good to them.
Thank you, Tey. Sue was/is beloved by many. I suppose it's not subtle at all that my grief about higher ed is bound up in my grief from losing her. It was possible to believe in the enterprise when people like her were in positions of influence.
"A scholar learns to guard against confirmation bias and straw opponents, to read with curiosity rather than a priori judgments. You show all your cards — you never hide the inconvenient footnotes up your sleeve. If you are a scientist, you show your steps so transparently that others can reproduce them, and you take care to make your claims falsifiable."
Good LORD I wish we could get those times back! A time before ideology had captured even science and the humanities. Give me cold, blind rationality and unnamed talent any day! Great piece, Josh. Sue sounds like quite the mentor, and she had to put up with serious old-school sexism. Love what you said about ambition and the marriage between passion and cold-potato rationality.
Thanks, Michael! Yes, I've been thinking about these things as an entrepreneur, how cautious I sometimes am about making bold claims. The standard often is to manifest confidence even when you feel none and, as Open AI is doing, to make raw grabs at market share even as the science or core of the enterprise is under construction. I wonder if think tanks are the future of scholarship, though they come with their own ideological blinders. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to do scholarship solo without access to a true research library.