specialization
TagHow Risk-Averse is Academic Philosophy?
“Philosophical inquiry thrives when it is conducted in a spirit that risks overreaching a bit,” yet “the current incentive structure of academic philosophy in the United States favors cautious and modest research agendas for early career philosophers.” (more…)
Increased Specialization & Competent Peer Review
Is increased specialization in philosophy a problem for high-quality peer review? (more…)
Jargon & Citation in Philosophy
A study of papers published in academic science journals on the topic of “cave science” found that “papers containing higher proportions of jargon in their titles and abstracts were cited less frequently by other researchers.” (more…)
Specialization, Technicality, and the Production of Philosophy
Adrian Moore, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, as well as co-editor of the journal Mind, makes some observations about academic philosophy today. (more…)
Is “American Philosophy” an Endangered Area of Specialization?
Is American Philosophy in jeopardy as an area of study in the profession of philosophy today? Gregory Pappas, professor of philosophy at Texas A & M and president of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) is concerned that it is. (more…)
The Publication Emergency (guest post by J. David Velleman)
The following is a guest post* by J. David Velleman, professor of philosophy at New York University. It discusses the problems that arise from graduate students publishing more and more, and presents a pair of suggestions for how to improve matters. (more…)
The “Grad School Takeover”
Even in four-year colleges that emphasize undergraduate education, new appointments are going to top graduates from a mere handful of prestigious doctoral programs that emphasize research and professional advancement over teaching. The academic job market and tenure expectations focus ever more intently on publications, whether in book or journal form, that tend to ..
Keeping it Real in Philosophy: an Exchange
This summer has seen a series of guest posts by Elijah Millgram (Utah) on his new book, The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization. One theme of the book is that there has been a steep increase in specialization that in some ways threatens knowledge. In the following post*, Millgram starts an exchange with Jerome Ravetz, author of Scientif..
Metaphysics by Forgetting (guest post by Elijah Millgram)
This is the fourth in a series of guest posts* by Elijah Millgram (Utah) based on themes from his new book, The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization. (Here are the first, second, and third entries.) (more…)
Doing It All By Yourself (guest post by Elijah Millgram)
This is the third in a series of guest posts* by Elijah Millgram (Utah) based on themes from his new book, The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization. Earlier posts are here and here. (more…)
Serial Hyperspecializers and How They Think (guest post by Elijah Millgram)
This is the second in a series of guest posts* by Elijah Millgram (Utah) based on themes from his new book, The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization. The first post appeared here last week. (more…)
The Endarkenment at Home: Benchmarking Academics (guest post by Elijah Millgram)
The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization is a new book by Elijah Millgram (Utah). In the book, Professor Millgram looks at the implications of our becoming, more and more, “a society of specialists” in which “communication across the barriers between the professions and disciplines is our own very pressing problem,” a problem that “threat..