Commentary on the PhD Octopus

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-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
 
 <quote>
 Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant