\nWhy can’t I use that empty lot across the street? Because if I \ntry, someone will complain to some government official and \na policeman will come telling me that what I am doing is \nillegal, to stop and desist on the threat of arrest. And if I \nignore him, he will arrest me. And I will be in a jail, where \nthey will then feed me some vegetables and eggs, and even \ngive me a chicken breast. In other words, they will give me \n(in exchange for a deprivation of my freedom to roam) the \nvery things which I was trying to procure by my own efforts.\n<\/p>
\nA bit paradoxical, don’t you think?\n<\/p>
\nTo explain this conundrum requires getting some knowledge of the culture of my vicinity. And as with all work — including the getting of information and knowledge — there is a division of labor. Knowledge is obtained by research and study, and the results are published in all sorts of places — mostly in scholarly journals and books. And these are stored, mostly in libraries, and now also on computers.\n
\nHow does this relate to my problem of trying to understand \nwhy if I try to furnish my own food supply on the empty \nlot, I could wind up receiving food in jail, where I would rather \nnot be?\n<\/p>
\nHow and where do I get an answer to this problem? If I go \nto a library, I am sure that someone there will figure out that \nthis is a legal problem and point to the section housing the \nlaw books. And if I tell the librarian that I want a wider \ncultural and historical perspective, I will most likely be taken \nto a section on sociology and economics, and then to a \nsection on history. And if I ask the librarian if there are any \nnormative studies as to what should be the case, I will likely \nbe taken to some section on political philosophy or political \nscience (so-called).\n<\/p>
\nYou get the picture!\n<\/p>
\nAnd if you pick up any of these “scholarly” writings, you will \nbe bombarded with a nightmare of references and footnotes. \nWhy? To prove to some decider (like an editor of some \npublication, or a chairman or a dean in some school who \ndecides whether to hire the scholar), as well as to the reading \npublic that the scholar did a whole lot of “research.”\n<\/p>
\nSo, what is literary “research”? It is the scrutiny of the work \nof others as to how they tried to solve some problem, and \nreferencing the work of authors; so that others — if they so \ndesire — can verify the references for accuracy and \nplausability of interpretation.\n<\/p>
\nWhat would happen if we removed from a piece of scholarship all the footnotes and references?\n<\/p>
\nThe result would be some sort of alternative proposals for a \nsolution. Let’s call the listing of proposed solutions — a \nlibrarian’s list.\n<\/p>
\nBut, although a listing of alternatives is good, what I really \nwant is a solution — and if not a solution, at least the best \nalternative.\n<\/p>
\nNow, I do not mean to single out the book by Alexander \nGray, The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin (1946), but it \ndoes serve as an example of what I want to stress. I have \nconsulted it as a book about socialism, and have found the \nscholarship very helpful — I mean it is full of names, \nreferences, and footnotes — all very helpful for further \nresearch for a solution to my original problem.\n<\/p>
\nIt has led me to look at the work of Anton Menger and the \nuncovering of the early English writers on socialism, which \npresent more alternatives. \n<\/p>
\nHowever, the book also endeavors to provide us with the \nabstracted alternatives gleaned from all this scholarship, and \nto adjudicate between them.\n<\/p>
\nHere, I believe, it fails. Not all the plausible alternatives are \npresented for consideration. There are too many conceptual \nblunders, and too many emotive disparagements. \n<\/p>
\nIn a broad sense of speaking, too much concentration on \nscholarship distracts and prolongs the finding of a solution to \na problem, and is thus, in this sense, its enemy. \n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a problem. I cannot go across the street from where I live where there is an open grass-covered block of land and plant some edible plants, or erect a fenced-in chicken coop for a supply of daily eggs. Instead, I have to get these from a grocery store by paying money — which … Continue reading “Problem Solving and Its Enemies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bullshit-scholarship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2751,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}