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Numerous posts here have expressed exasperation with academia, and its love for abstract theory at the expense of practical questions of how to make a system of intellectual property actually work.
Photon Courier has a nice essay musing on "the growing ascendancy of theory and abstraction in American society."
Sample:
Why is theory (which would often more accurately be called meta-theory) so attractive to so many denizens of university humanities departments? To some extent, the explanation lies in simple intellectual fad-following. But I think there is a deeper reason. Becoming an alcolyte of some all-encompassing theory can spare you from the effort of learning about anything else. For example: if everything is about (for example) power relationships--all literature, all history, all science, even all mathematics--you don't need to actually learn much about medieval poetry, or about the Second Law of thermodynamics, or about isolationism in the 1930s. You can look smugly down on those poor drudges who do study such things, while enjoying "that intellectual sweep of comprehension known only to adolescents, psychopaths and college professors" (the phrase is from Andrew Klavan's unusual novel True Crime.) The phrase "law schools" would subsitute nicely for "university humanities departments." And I am often struck by the extent to which most discussions of open source software betray very little knowledge of important provisions of the licenses under which it is distributed. (E.g.)
The essay goes on to apply the lesson to management and business:
[Management legend] Peter Drucker remembers his conversations with Uncle Henry. "He would tell stories constantly, always to do with a late consignment of ladies' hats, or a shipment of mismatched umbrellas, or the notions counter. His stories would drive me up the wall. But gradually I learned to listen, at least with one ear. For surprisingly enough he always leaped to a generalization from the farrago of anecdotes and stocking sizes and color promotions in lieu of markdowns for mismatched umbrellas."
Reflecting many years later, Drucker observes: "There are lots of people with grasshopper minds who can only go from one specific to another--from stockings to buttons, for instance, or from one experiment to another--and never get to the generalization and the concept. They are to be found among scientists as often as among merchants. But I have learned that the mind of the good merchant, as also of the good artist or good scientist, works the way Uncle Henry's mind worked. It starts out with the most specific, the most concrete, and then reaches for the generalization." This is, by the way, the Common Law approach, which fell into disrepute during the central planning heyday that started with the New Deal.
(Link from the Carnival of the Capitalists.)
posted by James DeLong @ 9:17 AM | General
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