The Doctor is.............Out!

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) This show is all about listening to the calls of the wild and trying to decipher them - always with the assumption that the sounds in fact have a meaning, a purpose in the animals' lives. But before we go on…Is it all utilitarian? I mean, is any of it, you think, just because it feels good? (Scientific American Frontiers, April 8, 2003)

One of the more stunning things I learned this week was that all dissertations written in the school of education at my university must be quantitative in nature. I surely knew that many or most education PhDs relied on “data” and statistics, but I guess I’m a little taken aback that one cannot write a reflective, interpretive, theoretical, or historical education dissertation without hiring a statistician. Does anything more need to be said about why our schools are in such a sorry state? Oh my!

And it gets worse. Surely I’m not the only one who ruined his Saturday breakfast with an early perusal of the New York Times Magazine and the latest installment this culture’s favorite game, Who Needs the Humanities, Anyway? I’m referring of course to “The Literary Darwinists,” an unflinching bit of publicity for another batch of morons who want to look at the world through the grey lens of bad science. Guess what? Even Jane Austen’s fabulous wit, coruscating irony, and fascinatingly twisted characters offer evidence of the “hard-wired” behaviors of this pulsing, urgent, flawed creature, man.

Never mind that this is biology at its dopiest or just Puritanism in disguise. Never mind that “hard-wired” is goddamned figurative language. Never mind that Elizabeth Bennett isn’t a real person. Never mind that Jane Austen wasted her fertile years on writing, not reproducing or that Darwin, Freud, and all decent scientists (even Sherlock Holmes and Horatio Caine) are themselves storytellers. No, we are post-humanities, and even the most bookish types exude a kind of glee in dismissing (and starving) any types of research or analysis that deny the lazy certainty of measurements, counts, and equations.

Now I’m not knocking good science or cures to cancer or Tang or all that. But, whether it’s Maureen Dowd’s annoying biologistic androphobia or E.O. Wilson’s smug anti-Gastonism, it gets under my skin. My monkey brain makes me want to smash something. There are a lot of ways around this, if anyone even wants to bother. I always recommend Althusser’s Reading Capital. Just the first forty pages simply undress these worst ideas that we build our jails with.

A hundred years later and Conrad’s Marlow still has it right:

"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. 'Good, good for there,' he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there,' he said. 'And when they come back, too?' I asked. 'Oh, I never see them,' he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place inside, you know.' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are going out there. Famous. Interesting, too.' He gave me a searching glance, and made another note. 'Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is that question in the interests of science, too?' 'It would be,' he said, without taking notice of my irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but . . .' 'Are you an alienist?' I interrupted. 'Every doctor should be -- a little,' answered that original, imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you messieurs who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation . . .' I hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I wouldn't be talking like this with you.' 'What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . 'Du calme, du calme, Adieu.