Pop Star Professors

A friend of mine recently said that the academic life is the life of mental masturbation. Although he was wise enough to point out that masturbating can be fun, I think that his point was that academics do a lot of fun stuff (to them, at least) but don't contribute much. As a potential academic, I'd like to dismiss that critique out of hand, but I think it deserves some respect. There seems to me to be a good argument that at least some class of academics contribute next to nothing to society, and have talents that would be better applied elsewhere. Troll through some of the less prestigious journals of law or humanities if you doubt me. And its not like a lot of those folks are good teachers.

I'm not willing, or able, to fully engage that form of the argument. However, the claim that no academics contribute to society is far too strong. There are some who make remarkably important contributions, and are justly celebrated for it. Now, I'm not talking about these pop-star professors, like Alan Dershowitz, who seem to be mere media creations. I'm talking about folks like Ludwig Wittgenstein, who alter the direction of academic thought, and later popular thought. Here's testimony to Wittgenstein's influence, a philosopher who died more than 50 years ago:

Ludwig Wittgenstein's only known musical work had its world premiere last week in Cambridge. It is called, according to the title that he had pencilled above his two-line score, Leidenschaftlich (in English, "Passionate"). At four bars, it lasts less than 30 seconds and is little more than a powerful, fiery flourish.

Yet it brought an invited audience of 150 curious Wittgenstein enthusiasts

If I go the PhD route, I'm sure I will avoid being Dershowitz. But I hope I'm more like Wittgenstein, and less like the nameless, faceless masturbators.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:50 PM