The full text of William James's article The Ph.D Octopus which is -conveniently enough in the public domain, and worth republishing.
+Thanks to the public domain I have republished the full text of +William James's article The Ph.D Octopus. It is a rather nice essay on +the over-reliance on academic accredation as a measure of intellectual +worth which I find is a particularly relevant issue today.
+ +What makes this most interesting is that it was published in 1903 by a +man who was seeing our present-day culture form before his eyes. Ah! +What an exciting—or perhaps, terrifying—time the beginning of the +20th century must have been! All of the technological progress in our +time has been meaningless in contrast to our utter cultural +stagnation. Perhaps exciting times are here for us now; perhaps the +time has come to reverse—or transcend—the cultural progress of the +early 20th century.
+ ++ + - + January 21, 2013@@ -300,6 +320,8 @@ pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!