From 3ec24ac65a81ee73c21fdaa4f4bfe1ddbf4daec7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: clinton Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 03:26:43 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Commentary on the PhD Octopus --- William James - The PhD Octopus.muse | 17 +++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/William James - The PhD Octopus.muse b/William James - The PhD Octopus.muse index 8919aab..69e4063 100644 --- a/William James - The PhD Octopus.muse +++ b/William James - The PhD Octopus.muse @@ -1,5 +1,18 @@ -The full text of William James's article *[[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20768][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 *[[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20768][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. + +* Full Text Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant -- 2.20.1