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RE: orion: Scholars and Others [was: Altman and Crowder]
This is Mike Sanders writing:
>>How would you "classify" for example Professor Eisenman on
>>the one hand and Allegro on the other.
I also was thinking about well-known PhDs. I would never have questioned
either of the above: who could honestly say that Allegro was any better or
worse than Dupont-Sommer who had some very strange ideas, along with each
other individual working on the scrolls -- being one of the pioneers he
blazed trails and made mistakes, from which we have learnt; Eisenman has
also shown his scholarly abilities, yet has proven to be quite monomanic in
his pursuit of his pseudo-historical interests and should stick to what he
knows. I could add a few flagrant examples, but there is no need: we can all
think of the odd connections that some people want to see between the
scrolls and Christianity, for example.
It's the following from Paul V. M. Flescher that is truly interesting:
>By the criteria I laid out in my previous message, both are trained,
>competant scholars. To be a scholar is to have the training and the
>intellectual ability to participate in scholarship.
It seems that the major criterion here is to be able to participate in
scholarship, rendering the idea of a PhD only marginal, 007's licence to
kill, so to speak. Benjamin Lee Whorf probably should have kept out of
linguistics. Aleksandr Borodin should have stuck to chemistry and Modest
Moussorgsky to a military career. Michael Ventris, the architect, naturally
shouldn't have been followed regarding linear B. Of course, we shouldn't
bother reading Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
because they were written by untrained spinsters and not by people who'd got
degrees in literature and post-graduate studies in creative writing. I'm
sure it would make life simpler, but some of the writings by Ivan Illich (on
the protection and isolation of the medical and educative institutions)
might elucidate some of the implications.
Have a nice weekend.
Jay
John J. Hays
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I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto!