<p>Coureur - but do you like to do so?</p>
<p>Check this one out from the NYTimes essay contest.</p>
<p>Why</a> College Matters - Essay - Magazine - New York Times Blog</p>
<p>Instead of talking about intellectualism...I like to think about intellectual energy. With intellectualism you have the sense that all that counts is liberal arts knowledge-- and the potential luxury some might have of not having to make that knowledge work into a paying job some day.</p>
<p>Intellectual energy is different. It is a sense of passion for ideas, some of which might end up producing money, for learning and for synthesizing and creating. I would want my children in a place with lots of intellectual energy first and foremost.</p>
<p>Son #2 is as a Junior taking graduate level courses in Ethics and other areas that are his favorite classes ever. The access to these classes, which his friend at the bastion of intellectualism down the street cannot logistically get to, is just one of the excellent things about being at a university which otherwise might be charged with being....'pre-professional'. His literary society and other favorite EC's are others. </p>
<p>I think his school has plenty of intellectual energy, by the way.</p>
<p>"And really, how many really want to hold a sustained conversation about dynamical systems or dark matter? Or even truly want to know about these topics? Or for that matter, Sima Qian's philosophy of history or Song lyric poetry?"</p>
<p>I don't know how many people are interested in all these things, but those who are interested are what I would call intellectuals. I don't care if my surgeon is an intellectual or not when he is about to operate on me...I want him to be a brilliant surgeon. But a brilliant surgeon is not necessarily an intellectual. If I'm sitting beside him at a dinner party, though, it might make a difference. He may have interesting things to say about surgery, but if that's all he knows or cares about, he won't be a very good conversationalist.</p>
<p>So being an intellectual is the same as being a good conversationalist?</p>
<p>I can try to compare or listen to comparison between Thucydides and Sima Qian, French symbolic and Song lyric poetry, but would be at a total loss following a conversation about dynamical systems or supersymmetry. And I'll bet that this would apply to 90% of people with some pretension to being intellectuals. It is easier talking about the humanities and social sciences. But it does not mean that those who do research on dynamical systems or supersymmetry and cannot or will not communicate with others more than the dictionary definition of what they study are not intellectuals. </p>
<p>What about someone who is a bit of a hermit or socially inept but is truly interested in the world of ideas, as opposed to being good at social chit chat?
Andrew Wiles holed up for ten years in order to work on solving Fermat's Theorem. I have the strong suspicion that he is not a brilliant conversationalist. </p>
<p>Again is intellectualism something that one is or something that one performs? I've always thought that one is an intellectual; one does not act an intellectual (unless one is a poseur).</p>
<p>Hunt, my son got into Harvard and was not outstanding in all his classes. He got B's in English every year until his senior year when a scheduling conflict kept him from taking honors English. He never took AP English. However, I'll admit he is a top student in everything else and had a very well defined interest in an area that Harvard is trying to expand and he got a boost from being a legacy.</p>
<p>"But it does not mean that those who do research on dynamical systems or supersymmetry and cannot or will not communicate with others more than the dictionary definition of what they study are not intellectuals."</p>
<p>I guess I don't understand what you think it means to be an intellectual. You seem to think it means a person who is very intelligent and accomplished. I don't agree. I think an intellectual is a person with broad interests, and who enjoys exchanging ideas with others, including others in different fields of expertise. I don't think it's the same as being a good conversationalist, but I think being a good conversationalist is a typical trait of an intellectual.<br>
Mathmom, I'm sure Harvard and other top schools do take students with some Bs--but I continue to think that the average Harvard student of today has taken a much more rigorous high school curriculum than the average Harvard student of twenty or thirty years ago...in part, because so few schools actually had very rigorous curricula back then. Back then, a reasonably talented student could "breeze through" high school with all As--and in many cases, never take calculus, never write a lengthy research paper, etc. Now, maybe those same students would have buckled down and worked harder if the harder curriculum had been available, but I'm not sure that's the case.</p>
<p>My definition of an intellectual is someone who rigorously studies any topic, especially because they are fascinated by it. In my opinion, the fact that the topic is ancient Chinese culture or math or science or politics or economics is irrelevant. An intellectual desires to thoroughly understand a topic (possibly from a new point of view), and spends considerable time studying and/or thinking about the topic.</p>
<p>I distinguish between intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals. Pseudo-intellectuals read about a latest theory or even a long-held theory and spout it off, without rigorously understanding the arguments and counter-arguments. This often requires a great amount of energy and intelligence, and it may place a person in a very small percentile of all people in terms of knowledge, but in my opinion it does not qualify a person as an intellectual. Such a person is often condescending toward others who are not enlightened. Pseudo-intellectuals are frequently content to refute arguments by noting the high percentage of noted scholars who hold the same position as they do.</p>
<p>As an example, when someone starts talking about some book by Steven Hawking but then later talks about how stupid people were for considering that the sun travels around the earth each day before we proved that the sun is the center of the solar system, it clearly demonstrates that such a person does not understand the difference between kinematics and dynamics, or the difference between mathematical simplicity and truth. Such a person is not an intellectual, at least not in the area of dynamics.</p>
<p>Agree with PAfather.</p>
<p>There are plenty of real intellectuals who are not good at conversation; and plenty of good conversationalists who are very shallow in their understanding of what they are talking about. One can hold fascinating conversations about books or movies one has not read or seen on the basis of reviews. But does that make one an intellectual? Or just a dilettante? If you want to have an interesting guest list, perhaps you should invite the latter. But don't depend on them to advance knowledge or to be able to discuss movies or books or anything else in any depth or have truly original ideas.</p>
<p>I think the two of you are describing a scholar, or maybe an expert. A person like that is very commendable, and I don't mean to insult him or her by saying that being an "intellectual" means something else. A college of people who are absorbed in their own fields and are not good conversationalists could hardly be described as having an "intellectual atmosphere." It might be described as rigorous, or full of geniuses, or something like that. Of course, you are free to think an intellectual is whatever you like: 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.' "</p>
<p>Someone with deep knowledge of one subject at the level of fact is one thing. </p>
<p>Were I to describe that person as an intellectual I would expect him or her to rise up one level and discuss the connections or implications of that subject matter - patterns visible either in the system of the body of knowledge that are not immediately evident or, even better, ways in which these patterns can be seen elsewhere or illuminate other subjects.</p>
<p>Anthropologists of all and any knowledge maybe.</p>
<p>How much they talk about it I don't really care but I do expect a real intellectual to be so compelled by their ideas that they must share them somehow.</p>
<p>And see eyes glaze when they start discussing differential topology or dark matter or Tang prosody or the molecular physiology of neuron glia interaction (this one's from the Harvard catalog--I have no idea what the class is about). The fact is that many subjects do not lend themselves to cocktail chatter. And that many with deep knowledge of a subject find that their interlocutors are unable to follow them past the catalog description of what they do.</p>
<p>But these scholars--whether or not they are called intellectuals-- do share their ideas. That's what academic publishing is about. </p>
<p>Hunt:</p>
<p>I did make a distinction between having an intellectual atmosphere and being an intellectual. It is possible for a school to have plnety of intellectuals without cultivating an overtly intellectual atmosphere.</p>
<p>It seems this discussion veers into the domain of phenomenology. If someone holes up in an attic for the ten years in order to work on Fermat Theorem and does not talk to anyone, is he still an intellectual? Does he need someone else to validate his existence or his status as an intellectual? Eventually, Andrew Wiles did emerge from his self-imposed isolation and published his findings to great eclat. </p>
<p>And who says that someone who does research on supersymmetry or Tang prosody is incapable of being interested in some other topic?</p>
<p>" A college of people who are absorbed in their own fields and are not good conversationalists could hardly be described as having an 'intellectual atmosphere.' "</p>
<p>Who mentioned anything about people who are absorbed in their own fields? I find that most people who excel at anything tend to appreciate others who excel at other things (e.g. Warren Buffett and Lebron James are reportedly friends). A college with an "intellectual atmosphere" would include a significant number of people who rigorously study various topics, and would very likely including interesting conversations among students/faculty members who have similar and/or diverse interests.</p>
<p>By the way, I know some intellectuals who are not great conversationalists. It takes extra effort to be a good listener to have a conversation with such a person, but in my opinion it is well worth it.</p>
<p>I think an intellectual is one who pursues knowledge as a means of self-examination. It really doesn't matter what the subject of study is. What matters is how one perceives it, what one sees in it, and why one responds to it as one does. There is a reason why I love broccoli and my wife doesn't. An intellectual explores this as a question, and she does it naturally because she is so curious about herself, and by extension of herself curious about others, that she cannot help herself. She is asking more than teaching, and by asking and discussing, she teaches.</p>
<p>"What do you experience when you first encounter broccoli?", an intellectual might ask.
"Well," her interviewee might begin, "as I start to chew--".
"I'm sorry, I mean when you FIRST encounter it.".
"What do you mean?".
"I mean when you even think of it, before you even smell it?".
"But what if I have never encountered it? Then thinking of it would be impossible."
"Perhaps it would be. But consider that your first encounter with broccoli is the word 'broccoli' itself. How does that word make you feel? I suppose we'll need to explore how the sound 'brocc' or perhaps even 'br', and even how the letter 'b' makes you feel. But lets deal with 'broccoli' for now.".
"Hmmm. Just a sec. I've never thought of it like this before."</p>
<p>The intellectual, I think, explores everything and tries to integrate her findings into an intellectual philosophy. As she searches, she tends to cause others to search. She doesn't even have to have an open-mind about all things. There are some things that she may think simply ought not be entertained because those things run contrary to the ethic by which her life is governed. So she will not entertain them at all, though she will always entertain an apparent flaw in her ethic and in this way entertain that which she refuses to entertain directly. I think the intellectual always senses a cosmic logic and strives to search the cosmos for its shape with the hope of conforming to it.</p>
<p>I think most people are not intellectuals. Indeed I think very many who think themselves intellectual are in fact virulent anti-intellectuals. They tend to have their views, worship cold open-mindedness, laying aside the equally important virtues of decency, respect, kindness, and running roughshod over the sensibilities of others because they value "intellectualism" and "science" more than they value the rest of the qualities that go into making up a truly human being. They grow weary of intellectual pursuits. The very moment the intellectual begins to explore the depths of some issue, the intellectual anti-intellectual's brain clicks off and begins to deal with some tangential issue drven by some motive other than self-exploration - most typically self-justification or even self-aggrandizement.</p>
<p>I do not fancy myself an intellectual. I know for a fact I tend not to meet my own standard of what an intellectual is. But I know intellectuals when I see them and I have to say, I am pretty much in awe of these folks.</p>
<p>Doesn't bother me that intellectuals aren't found in many of today's college kids. Don't think they have ever been found to any great degree in kids. College helps create intellectuals, I think.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier: "The intellectual, I think, explores everything and tries to integrate her findings into an intellectual philosophy."</p>
<p>I agree. Also, I think they see connections between things which are not usually thought to be connected. </p>
<p>Also, I would say Drosselmeier's broccoli story illustrates that the intellectual has an impulse to derive things rigorously from the ground up. And this impulse is the reason why they see these connections between disparate fields and is the source of new insights. If they are a mathematician, they may be drawn to it because they see even the most abstract concepts in real life. A recent valedictorian at Princeton in economics, a guy who ended up finising his PhD at 23 (!), recently said something like that about why he enjoys economics. </p>
<p>Further, I think the true intellectual would be equally able in mathematics as they would be in english. Instead of thinking of "being good at" certain subjects as being about knowing equations in physics or being taught to recognize certain symbolism in a poem, the true intellectual should be able to derive both from the ground up. Excelling in english and mathematics require the same abstract reasoning, which is why many great philosophers were mathematicians.</p>
<p>So, in conclusion, I don't think the intellectual necessarily will be well-read or be engaged in current events. However, when they do engage in such activities, they probably will come up with a new and original insight. And that insight will inform their analysis of other subjects, tweaking the filter through which they see the world. Also, intellectual conversation at lunchtime may not be a great indicator as intellectuals are often introverts. It is the creativity, originality, and rigor of abstract thinking which typifies the intellectual rather than the subject or breadth of study or their interest in a professional career vs. the ivory tower.</p>
<p>It's pretty clear from this thread that there is no common understanding about what constitutes an intellectual. Since we can't even figure out what an intellectual is, it's going to be pretty darn hard to determine whether Harvard has more or fewer of them now than it did in the past.</p>
<p>What we need is for Lucy Caldwell to check in here and tell us what SHE thinks an intellectual is, since it is her complaint about the lack of them that started this thread.</p>
<p>It's pretty clear from this thread that there is no common understanding about what constitutes an intellectual. </p>
<p>That's why I suggested we define it. Of course, I knew we'd never agree .:)</p>
<p>Well, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."</p>
<p>and "Do I contradict myself? So I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."</p>
<p>Do you think we should make Lucy identify the quotations?</p>
<p>1) Emerson: "Self Reliance"
2) Whitman: "Song of Myself"</p>
<p>Do I get to play with Lucy now?</p>