Jobs for academic types

Benoit Hardy-Vallee, author of the fantastic blog Natural Rationality, has a great little post on what to do with a Ph.D outside academia. He even has a whole section of links to resources for philosophers on finding non-academic jobs! Who would have guessed it? Philosophers in demand!

The New Darwinism in the Humanities

Something a bit more positive about the humanities...

A couple of years ago Harold Fromm, an English studies professor at the University of Arizona, published the best short study of the application of evolutionary psychology to the humanities I have ever come across. The article, published in the Hudson Review, was "The New Darwinism in the Humanities" and came in two parts: "Part I: From Plato to Pinker" (pdf) and "Part II: Back to Nature, Again" (pdf). As I have mentioned before, while I have don't know the literature well enough to sides in internal debates, a scientific approach (with suitable Darwinian infusions) is exactly what I think the humanities needs. A flourishing, successful, scientifically orientated research program may finally loosen the grip of fashionable nonsense such as postmodernism and start bringing the "two cultures" closer together. Done right, such an approach may fetter theorizing in the humanities to the real world, preventing it from drifting randomly.

In any case, Fromm's article is an excellent guide to an emerging field. Give it a try.

A random, speculative hypothesis regarding the humanities

The requirement of regular accurate feedback for the development of expertize that I mentioned in my previous post made me think (read: speculate wildly)...

Maybe the manifest uselessness of some of those in the humanities can be explained by the fact that they never, or rarely, get suitable feedback. When a surgeon makes a (serious) mistake, a patient dies. When a civil engineer fouls up a calculation, a bridge comes tumbling down. When a vulcanologist prophecies falsely, the volcano shows her up. When a physicist hypothesizes wrongly, the experimental data exposes it. In contrast, an English professor (say), gets no feedback whatsoever from his materials, his subject matter - only from colleagues. And colleagues - unlike erupting volcanoes or a dead patient - can be argued with, dismissed or (seemingly reasonably) rationalized away. As a result, thinking in the humanities can become totally untethered - free to drift capriciously like fads or fashions. The result? Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luca Luce Irigaray...

Anyway, don't take this too seriously.

Literary Darwinism: Bridging the Cultures

In his famous 1959 Rede Lecture, "The Two Cultures," C. P. Snow argued that there existed a worrying divergence and growing incompatibility between two sorts of intellectual: scientists and literary intellectuals. Alas, almost 50 years later, many of the problems Snow identified remain and have probably even grown: witness the dominance of post-modernism, post-structuralism and other woo in the humanities. (This despite pointed and seemingly decisive criticisms).

So it's certainly a good thing that there is a group of researchers, Literary Darwinists, who are helping, in a modest way, to bridge the chasm from both ends. Jennifer Schuessler, writing on the NYT blog Paper Cuts, reviews a recent addition to this literature: Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altrusitic Punishment, and other Biological Components of Fiction by William Flesch. (Full disclosure: I haven't actually read the book, only about it). Flesch, professor of English Literature at Brandeis, seems to have solid humanities credentials, which means it's harder to portray Literary Darwinists as consisting solely of cold-hearted and naive scientists trying to colonize the humanities. Imagine that, scientists and English professors working on a single research program...

While I haven't read Flesch's book, I have ventured into other parts of the Literary Darwinist literature, mainly Joseph Carroll's work, and, speaking generally, I think it's exactly the sort of thing that should be happening. I don't know the field nearly well enough to have strong opinions, or to take sides in particular debates, but it's clear evolutionary psychology needs some account of literature and art generally. If we are aiming to provide a naturalistic (and pomo/nonsense-free) understanding of human behavior, it's clear we can't shy away from tackling distinctively human activities such as the creation and enjoyment of literature. Moreover, I would be extremely surprised if knowledge of our evolved mental architecture did not contribute to literary studies - so it's hardly only a matter of literature constituting a 'problem' for scientists to solve, a Darwinian perspective on literature might end up enriching the humanities.

(See also: D. T. Max's "The Literary Darwinists" in the NYT Magazine and Harold Fromm's fantastic "The New Darwinism in the Humanities": Part 1 [pdf] and Part 2 [pdf]).