Intellectual Practice Discussion
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You have sketched out well the parameters of this key discussion. You know I'm interested in it in general--and even more so when it's specifically about you/us. Brief points in this medium; more in other, more conducive ones. You're on the right track, I think. -- Kim Kleinman
Thanks Sam for posting this. I'm afraid it is mostly auto-didactic for everyone, especially after graduate school. I remember being at the end of it and thinking that my intellectual life was over just as it was ending. I was completely wrong! The big difference is that in academe one is subject to peer review in various forms. Our community continues to instruct or guide us that way (at times it can get pretty constraining to the point of "disciplining" us) but we do get held accountable for some if not all of our claims. It isn't quite the same on wiki or a blog--for you the important thing is to be a member of a community and to engage in conversation, as you note. -- Betty Smocovitis
This is seriously wise, Sam.
Do you really hate auto-didacticism? Or do you just think it impoverished or inferior or something? The question arises in my mind exactly because, as you note, you've practiced it pretty effectively.
That said, yeah, a person runs up against its limits soon enough.
What you've posted is going to provoke more thinking on my part, but let me say now that being able to teach has made an enormous difference for me in this regard. It allows me to create an environment to work with others on things that seem to me to matter (to me), forces me to try to make clear to others why, and requires me to react to the views of others. And, unlike efforts directed at intellectual community with formal, professional peers, teaching situations permit me to enforce topicality.
To make it not about me: consider whether there's a place in your practice for taking on a teaching role.
-- Bruce Umbaugh@Bruce: I guess when phrased that way, I'd say I mostly hate the way that people who are purely or primarily auto-didactics tend to relate to more traditionally schooled/learned folks. And I guess I also don't like how it splits conversations between the conversations of the taught and the conversations of the self-taught. So I'm less opposed to the methodology and more to some of the products. Also the next thing on my list of things to write is something about teaching, though I hadn't really phrased it in your terms, so that's valuable.
-- tychoish
This is rich stuff. Thanks for starting it, Sam, and I'm tickled that Aunt Betty and Uncle Bruce are playing along. I agree with Betty that it is ultimately auto-didacticism all the way down with the important caveat that, for it to matter, it has to take place in a community. Scholarly communities have an institutionalized structure for that. You are part of creating parallel structures in cyberspace for a parallel enterprise. Not to get too meta, but you are part of a flux in discipline building. Just as there isn't a credential for your job (so yay good old liberal arts skills); just as there aren't HR department templates that define what you do nor companies that immediately know that they need you; just as you wonder whether you are an anthropologist or an economist or even, gasp, a science studies person; then the forms and fora for your intellectual practice are being forged in improvisational practice. Of course, there are lessons from the history of the rise of disciplines. You might find the book "Unifying Biology" suggestive on this point. And I really like Bruce's intuition about the role of teaching. Again, that is both literally true but also true in a meta sense. The classroom, like scholarly communities, is an institutionalized structure. What are the ways of making knowledge social in a systematic way? How are open source communities and others reaching in that same direction? All this to say that the questions you have raised are important not just personally but for the community in formation you are part of. You are very good at communities, so you'll draw on much. Including your experiences in the Morris community you are immersing yourself in this weekend.
-- Kim Kleinman