This is why, in more than 1000 posts on my own blog, I’ve said almost nothing that is original. Most of my posts instead summarize what other experts have said, in an effort to bring myself and my readers up to the level of the current debate on a subject before we try to make new contributions to it.
Foundational knowledge is more vital in the hard sciences than in psychology, which confronts you immediately with questions about what is the foundation. You have to make at least a tentative decision about which framework you’re going to get up to speed on. This requires doing some original (not necessarily novel) thinking from the start, unless the (unrealistic) plan is to thoroughly learn each of the competing frameworks. Also, in the softer fields, it’s possible to contribute precisely on account of one’s ignorance of what went before, too much knowledge of existing theories’ assumptions sometimes standing in the way of real progress.
Also, in the softer fields, it’s possible to contribute precisely on account of one’s ignorance of what went before, too much knowledge of existing theories’ assumptions sometimes standing in the way of real progress.
You haven’t noted the most horrible thing about this: that the fields are still valuable, even still necessary. Us being no good at them doesn’t change this.
c.f. medicine before germ theory and cell theory.
c.f. postmodernism, which is notoriously BS-ridden, but anyone who aspires to write good fiction needs a working knowledge of postmodernist techniques, whether they call them that or not.
Foundational knowledge is more vital in the hard sciences than in psychology, which confronts you immediately with questions about what is the foundation. You have to make at least a tentative decision about which framework you’re going to get up to speed on. This requires doing some original (not necessarily novel) thinking from the start, unless the (unrealistic) plan is to thoroughly learn each of the competing frameworks. Also, in the softer fields, it’s possible to contribute precisely on account of one’s ignorance of what went before, too much knowledge of existing theories’ assumptions sometimes standing in the way of real progress.
You haven’t noted the most horrible thing about this: that the fields are still valuable, even still necessary. Us being no good at them doesn’t change this.
c.f. medicine before germ theory and cell theory.
c.f. postmodernism, which is notoriously BS-ridden, but anyone who aspires to write good fiction needs a working knowledge of postmodernist techniques, whether they call them that or not.
So Poe was an instinctive postmodernist?