“Now no one would think of trying to set a timetable for creative work. It would be absurd to suggest that Kant was somehow remiss in waiting eleven years after his inaugural Dissertation before publishing the Critique of Pure Reason. Indeed, it is usually counted to his credit that he chose to withhold publication until he had solved the deep problems, which stood, in his way. But the doctoral candidate is urged, cajoled, seduced, and pressured to finish his dissertation quickly. He is told to take a manageable topic, limit it rigorously, work efficiently and produce something original and worthwhile!”… The natural response to the destructive anomalies of the Ph.D. is to lower both sights and standards. Don’t attempt an original and creative work, the candidate is told. Do something merely different and competent. Edit a text too obscure to have caught another scholar’s eye, survey the complete works of a minor figure justly forgotten; ring one more change on some old ideas which have not suffered every possible permutation as yet. Surely, it is obvious that no good can come out of such a system. Those few candidates, who have the seeds of creation within them, will be blighted by the necessity of contorting their original thoughts into the unnatural shape of the dissertation. The others competent though the are to master their field and teach it, are compelled to drag out of themselves the simulacrum of a new idea wasting their energies and like as not, destroying their enthusiasm for their chosen subject.” --Robert Paul Wolff, ‘The Ideal of the University,’
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 17:18:56 +0000