Klarinet Archive - Posting 000168.txt from 2004/08

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Different worlds....
Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:22:33 -0400

Tony Pay wrote:

>And certainly the requirement to justify scientific research on the basis of
>the measurable benefits it can be shown to deliver -- its 'cost-effectiveness'
>-- is one of the most perniciously short-sighted policies ever to have been
>dreamt up.
>

Definitely. There are so many applications which have only followed
(often hundreds of) years after the original research---for example, a
lot of the mathematical methods useful with relation to computers.

It also has the nasty side that people rush into a particular area of
work because there is a lot of grant support to be had for doing this
kind of research, rather than because it's a problem they really want to
work on (examples I think would be high-Tc superconductivity and protein
folding). I don't think that's a very good inspiration for doing good
science.

On the question of whether you have to be able to "quantify" what you
are doing to be able to do it well, here's a passage from Keith
Johnstone's "Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre":

Most schools encourage children to be /unimaginative/. The research
so far shows that imaginative children are disliked by their
teachers. Torrance gives an eye-witness account of an 'exceptionally
creative boy' who questioned one of the rules in the textbook: 'The
teacher became irate, even in the presence of the principal. She
fumed, "So! You think you know more than this book!" ' She was also
upset when the boy finished the problems she set almost as quickly
as it took to read them. 'She couldn't understand how he was getting
the correct answer and demanded that he write down all of the steps
he had gone through in solving each problem.'

Johnstone is writing in 1978, and the book he quotes was published in
1962, but in my experience that attitude---that everything should be
quantified---still exists in schools. Quantification makes things easier
as far as grading students go. It's missing the point IMO.

I once wrote a little poem about the damaging effect of "rules" on
creative thinking:

<>Reading the work on the school notice-boards
<>I notice that time after time,
The very best poems
Are written by the kids
Who haven’t yet learned
(They’re really too young)
That a good poem rhymes.

;-)

-- Joe

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