High value knowledge, and what to do with it

Around 830 AD the Benedictine monk and later Abbot Lupus Servatus, then living in Fulda, Germany, wrote the following in a letter to a close and learned friend: ‘Mihi satis apparent propter se ipsam appetenda sapientia.’ There are nuances in the original Latin, but the sentence has generally been translated as ‘It is quite apparent to me that knowledge should be sought for its own sake.’ Based in large part on this letter, Lupus has often been seen as the father of the humanist intellectual tradition, and the statement quoted above has been repeated and endorsed by many others, including Nietzsche and Albert Einstein. Many of those arguing for and defending a more traditional outlook on higher education repeat the formula.

In fact, the idea of ‘knowledge for its own sake’ has for many become the key test of higher education policy and strategy, suggesting a higher commitment to the integrity and independence of learning and scholarship; and often placed in opposition to a more impact-oriented or use-directed application of knowledge. But this affects not just higher education policy, but also the appropriateness and legitimacy of the strategic direction of some universities, and perhaps of certain academic disciplines or projects.

I confess that I don’t find this useful. For me, ‘knowledge for its own sake’ is a curiously empty formula, suggesting a metaphysical approach to knowledge that accords it importance without apparently knowing why. I believe strongly in the acquisition, discovery and dissemination of knowledge, but not for its own sake (which to me means nothing), but because knowledge empowers, civilises and innovates. The value of knowledge is in no way mysterious, it is compelling and clear. The case for learning is a much stronger one if its use can be explained clearly. ‘Knowledge for its own sake’ is no better as a pedagogical statement than ‘spinach for its own sake’ would be as a nutritional one.

What some who support a traditional outlook on higher education may not appreciate is that a formula such as this may have been persuasive when education and knowledge were largely the property of a social elite who had no need to justify what they were doing. Today’s society needs something more, and there is plenty to give. High value knowledge is at the root of social progress, inclusiveness, economic growth, better health, a higher quality of life. Universities need to be willing to associate themselves with such objectives and ideals, rather than arguing a much more opaque case based on a hoped for but not specifically targeted benefit flowing from detached learning and scholarship.

It may be time not just to modernise our higher education system, but also our understanding of why we do it.

Mrs Thatcher and me

Not unexpectedly, the online world has been all about Margaret Thatcher over the past 24 hours. It is what you would expect because whatever else anyone might want to say about her, she was a force to be reckoned with, and she changed things in the world.

Few would deny that, and certainly I don’t see anyone arguing the case for her irrelevance, but some of the online contributions right now are pretty extreme in their attacks on Mrs Thatcher. Maybe to my surprise – given that when she was Prime Minister of the UK I was pretty strong in my opposition to what she was doing – I am not inclined at all to share in the vitriol of many of those whose opinions I might otherwise respect.

I was only eligible to vote in one of the UK general elections in which she was a candidate: though that election was the one that brought her to power, in May 1979. I was doing research for a PhD in Cambridge at the time, and in fact had gone to an election rally addressed by her (as well as another addressed by Denis Healey of Labour). After that, I watched from the sidelines in Ireland. Those in UK universities with whom I worked closely had, mostly, the same opinion, which was that she was destroying British industry and subverting British society (an entity she famously claimed not to recognise). My then field of industrial relations was particularly affected. By 1981 the collective bargaining-based, non-law regulated system of workplace relations had been torn apart, and as we know, by the mid-1980s the power of the major trade unions had been largely broken. I wrote stuff about this.

But now, in 2013, would I go back to the practices and assumptions of 1979? Would I vote for a restoration of the old state-run industries and their form of industrial management? No, I don’t think so.

It is notoriously difficult to engage in a dispassionate assessment of a controversial figure at the point of their death. The passage of time is still needed to make sense of what happened. Margaret Thatcher’s memory will, I imagine, always have some degree of controversy associated with it. I still doubt I would vote for her. But I can admire her courage and tenacity, her sense of purpose, her unwillingness to be bullied by the political establishment.

And whatever the merits may have been of her views and policies, she presided over an era in which big questions were asked and significant debates conducted. It was a time in which the currents of history could be felt. We are much more impoverished now.

Mr Attlee’s children in the academy

In the course of a recent conversation on the margins of a public function, a prominent UK businessman suggested to me that British academics are ‘mostly the intellectual disciples of Clement Attlee’. I thought this an interesting comment, made more interesting to me because, in my family, we have recently had lively discussions about the impact of the Attlee government of 1945-51. I suspect that few would disagree that this government represented a watershed in British political history, but was its influence as great in the academy as my friend had suggested? And even if so, does any such influence still persist?

Perhaps the basis for such an assertion lies in the fact that, in the light of the economic convulsions of recent years and in particular of the reckless behaviour by banks that helped unleash the storm, some commentators (including academics) have been calling for policy responses that would not have looked out of place on the agenda of this post-War British government. Or would they?

As many readers will know, Clement Attlee’s Labour Party was elected and secured a large majority in Parliament in 1945, much to the surprise of many political observers who had expected an easy win by Winston Churchill. However this election outcome was heavily trailed by the interest shown in the Beveridge report of 1942 (Social Insurance and Allied Services). That report identified what it called the ‘Five Giants’ that stood in the way of social progress – Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness – and recommended a system of universal social insurance that would produce universal entitlements to benefits and service, without means testing. The report had been an instant bestseller (most unusual for a paper published by government), and this suggested that there was an appetite in Britain for more radical economic and social reform than was likely to be offered by the Conservatives.

In the event the Attlee government did a number of significant things, the most important of which in domestic policy were probably the large-scale nationalisation of utilities, public transport companies and key industries, and the fundamental reform of health and welfare (including the creation of the National Health Service, and the commitment to universal benefits). Its actions in foreign and defence policy were also significant, though they might look counter-intuitive to a present day audience: the strengthening of Britain’s defence structures, including the development of nuclear weapons, and some contradictory moves affecting the ‘Empire’ – independence for the Indian sub-continent, but the reinforcement of the African colonies. The Attlee government also initiated the programme leading to the development of nuclear power in energy generation.

How much of this is influential today? Wondering about the extent to which today’s academics (and others) are aware in any detail of Attlee’s policies, I conducted some totally unscientific surveys on Twitter and amongst those I have recently met in university life. A good few know nothing at all of Attlee or his government, except perhaps his name. Others express strong support for him, but seem to link him (or his government) solely with the NHS. Others indicate admiration of a wider range of his policies, while stating they were right for their time but perhaps would be less so today. Others are clearly committed followers, and some committed opponents.

It could be argued that today’s Britain is what it is as the complex legacy of both Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, with maybe a little Tony Blair. Indeed Margaret Thatcher herself was known, at a personal level, to be an admirer of Attlee (which she confirmed in her autobiography). It is indeed hard to deny that the actions of the post-War Labour government changed many things, not least in that the number of those living in poverty declined dramatically between the early 1930s and the early 1950s. The government undertook the kind of major structural changes needed in post-War Britain to ensure that it had an emancipated, educated, healthy population.

Ironically, perhaps the least successful Attlee project, but the one that still has the greatest resonance in Britain, was the NHS – which perhaps produced better levels of public health, but over time left Britain with an over-bureaucratised health service offering visibly lower quality of care than in almost any comparable country; but that would be strongly denied by a large proportion of the population, making health reform very difficult, no matter what ideological direction it comes from.

The other major project – nationalisation – has not had such a lasting impact, and was fairly successfully reversed by Margaret Thatcher. The idea expressed in 1945 in a phrase borrowed from Lenin, that the state should own ‘the commanding heights of the economy’, would not now be endorsed by any major political party. But something of the spirit may have survived in the view that still finds significant resonance, that the state and its agencies should regulate a good deal of economic activity; the suggestion being that much more regulation would have avoided the recent recession, an assertion that may have a good bit of popular support but actually not a whole lot of real evidence to back it.

But back to the academy: is it full of Attlee’s disciples? It’s not perhaps a question that can be answered in any useful way. There is no shortage of articles by key academics suggesting there was something heroic about the Attlee government. But that doesn’t make the universities ideological reservations for 1945-style socialists. What might be more interesting would be to ask whether analysts of British society today believe that the issues facing the United Kingdom are structurally similar to those that obtained in 1945. Clearly they are not. The UK, and its constituent parts, has problems it needs to address, but they are not the same as those that prompted the Beveridge report. Attlee, and his ministers, remain important figures in the history of change after the Second World War, and they undoubtedly still attract academic interest, as indeed they should. But are we all Attlee’s children? No, not really – the academy is more diverse than that, and in the end also more modern. I doubt we are together and in uniformity the disciples of any particular person or movement; and that is how it should be.

Overwhelmingly granite

As some readers of this blog may know, Aberdeen is known as the Granite City. Most of its buildings are made of granite, and the scale of it can be almost overwhelming at first sight. But the biggest granite building of them all is Marischal College, seen here.

Technically, there are lots of things wrong with this photo: the severe lens distortion, the cars, and so on. But this was the only perspective I could use to show as much of the building as possible. It is in fact the second largest granite building in the world (the biggest is in Spain). It took nearly a hundred years to build, and was completed around the beginning of the 20th century.

Marischal College itself was originally an independent university, but became part of the University of Aberdeen in the mid-19th century. The university has now however largely left the site, and the building itself is now the home of Aberdeen City Council. It is a significant landmark in the city.

What was the Holy Roman Empire?

On this day, August 6, in 1806 Kaiser (Emperor) Franz II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire (Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation), finally bringing to an end a political entity that had been around for a thousand years, if you count the emperors from Karl der Große (Charlemagne), a little less if you believe the Empire began with Otto der Große in 962. This action was a result of the decisive defeat of the armies of the Empire at Austerlitz by Napoleon, after which Franz concluded that his role as Holy Roman Emperor now lacked all credibility. He did however remain on what was by then his ‘other’ throne, as Kaiser Franz I of Austria, and in that role he played a decisive part in the Congress of Vienna that followed Napoleon’s defeat a few years later. The Holy Roman Empire was never restored, and in the new political realities that followed Prussia gradually became the dominant German power, culminating in the establishment of the new German Empire (Reich) in Versailles in 1871.

But what was this Holy Roman Empire? Politically it was an increasingly loose federation of states and statelets, at times numbering over 300, some of them astonishingly small. A map of the Empire from the late 18th century can be seen here, and it shows the confusing political make-up, with larger kingdoms and princedoms sitting alongside tiny feudal entities and church-run dioceses with their own political independence.

And yet, understanding the political, cultural and religious history of the Holy Roman Empire tells you much about Europe. Its chief national culture was Germanic, but the empire also contained Italian, slavic and Dutch elements. The search for political cohesion was in some ways a forerunner of similar quests in the European Union today. The gradual weakening and finally the dissolution of the Empire involved a transfer of geo-political power in Europe from Austria and the Habsburgs to Prussia and the Hohenzollern, and this created a new European power balance that, notwithstanding the convulsions of the two 20th century world wars, remains a reality of sorts today.

I suspect there isn’t too much interest in the Holy Roman Empire today. But there probably should be – understanding the Empire will help in understanding Europe. And right now we need that.

Finding the solution to, er, what was that again?

The 19th century British politician and Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, famously observed that ‘only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business: the Prince Consort, who is dead; a German professor, who has gone mad; and I, who have forgotten all about it.’ Largely based on that quotation the ‘Schleswig-Holstein question’ has become a metaphor for something both totally intractable and utterly boring.

I cannot pretend that I completely understand what the Schleswig-Holstein question was (though I believe it was about which country should rule the province, located between Denmark and Germany), but I do know who solved it. The issue was finally settled by force of arms; more specifically, it was concluded by the outcome of the battle of Königgraetz, the location of which was, as I’m sure you would have expected, in what is now the Czech Republic. In fact, Königgraetz is now known by its inhabitants as Hradec Králové, and I’m sure you will wish to know that every May it has an Air Ambulance Show, and in August Europe’s biggest Hip-Hop festival.

But why am I interested in Königgraetz, or Hradec Králové? Because the decisive military action in the battle fought there at the end of the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 was led by my great-great-great-grandfather, General Ferdinand von Prondzynski. The battle was won for Prussia, and as a result the Hapsburgs gave up all rights to Schleswig-Holstein, and it became Prussian. In his personal diaries, my ancestor revealed how difficult it had been to motivate his troops to fight, because like Lord Palmerston they didn’t know or had forgotten what the dispute was actually all about, and why they were fighting in Bohemia for a province a thousand kilometres away in Northern Germany. He wrote: ‘No strategy can be successful when those expected to implement it have no idea why it is important.’

I don’t really know how the General made the Schleswig-Holstein question seem important to his troops, but it appears he did. Still, ever since reading his notes I have been convinced that strategy is something more than, and more important than, a management plan. And I’m sure there are lessons in that somewhere for universities.

Animal farms in global politics

Today, June 25, is the birthday of the English writer and journalist Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell. Known everywhere and chiefly for his books Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, Orwell in fact was a prolific writer of novels, documentary books, pamphlets and poems. A democratic socialist by conviction, he was also a strong opponent of totalitarianism, and this latter pre-occupation – worked out in the two works referred to above – has immortalised him in the term ‘Orwellian’.

Those who may believe that Orwell’s work is of historical interest but no longer addresses issues of current significance should think again. Orwellian conditions exist in many countries, and with the capacity that now exists for technology to be used to extend state controls and intrusions no country can be declared with confidence to be immune.

It is entirely desirable that every new generation should read Orwell’s work.

Living and learning between disciplines

Next month sees the 364th anniversary of the birth of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Leibniz was a mathematician, a philosopher, a lawyer, a scientist, an alchemist, a theologian, an inventor, an archivist, an historian and a political scientist – and maybe other things besides. He was German, but he wrote in Latin and French. He strayed across the different disciplines and activities with consummate ease.

But what would we make of Leibniz today? Would we admire his eclectic scholarship, or would we suspect him of dumbing everything down? Would we see him as the typical modularisation project, with all its benefits and risks?

One of the key questions in higher education over the past decade or two has been about the desirability or otherwise of academic interdisciplinarity. There are few who would still dispute that many of the world’s problems can only be resolved by people who are able to engage different areas of knowledge in order to reach a coherent analysis and propose solutions. But it is also common to hear doubts expressed about the intellectual integrity of interdisciplinary teaching and research, and the charge that it involves superficial analysis.

It may well be true true that scholars need to have a good grounding in the disciplines they wish to study. But we need to ensure that specialisation is achieved within a broader context, including an understanding of relevant knowledge from other areas; and not just adjacent areas, but from across the whole spectrum. For example, addressing questions of ethics is becoming increasingly important for discovery in science. In any case, we need to remember that ‘disciplines’ are relatively arbitrary constructs, and that it is perfectly possible to have deep learning and scholarship by addressing issues within different boundaries. Some subject areas now described as ‘disciplines’ are in themselves new amalgamations of what were previously discrete areas, such as biotechnology.

We could therefore do worse than looking again at some of the great polymaths of past ages, including Gottfried von Leibniz, and ask whether their approach to knowledge was in fact rather modern by our current standards. We might ask whether our higher education programmes are still too much constrained by subject area boundaries, and whether as a result our graduates do not find it as easy as they should to address the problems facing society.

For what it is worth, Leibniz received another interesting accolade: he had a biscuit named after him.

It’s in the post

In the truly wonderful novel The Woman in White, written by Wilkie Collins and published in 1859, the heroine Miss Halcombe posts a letter from Yorkshire to London on June 17th, and has the reply in her hands on June 18th. I was reminded of this when, last week, I received a letter in Aberdeen on April 27th that had been posted in Yorkshire on April 4th. Not everything gets better with the passage of time.

In fact Collins wrote The Women in White less than 20 years after the postal service in its modern sense got under way. This came with the inauguration of the ‘penny post’ on this day (May 1) in 1840, thereby for the first time putting the mail within reach of most people. Prior to that date, the mail was what we would now describe as a courier service performed at the sender’s request but paid for by the recipient. Sir Rowland Hill’s pre-payment system using the ‘penny black‘ adhesive stamp changed everything, including the opportunity for Marian Halcombe to seek urgent help from London in the novel. In fairness, the penny black was not really Roland Hill’s idea; he is thought to have been inspired by an idea put forward by Scotsman James Chalmers in 1838. Though if we are to be precise, the first proposal for postage stamps was made in Austria in 1835 by the Slovenian civil servant Lovrenc Košir.

The postal service revolutionised communications. Writing and receiving letters was now open to pretty much everyone, and this became part of the post-industrialisation mobility of the general population.

But now, in the 21st century, everything has changed again. Email has made communicating with someone anywhere in the world an instant business, and even formal business documentation can now often be exchanged electronically. Can the mail service survive this revolution? Perhaps not. I still remember the excitement of the daily (actually, twice-daily in cities) mail delivery, but nowadays it is increasingly rare that the post serves up anything of much interest. Just occasionally I see a hand-written envelope, and at such moments I still think that, maybe, there will always be some demand for this service. Perhaps. But  if that is to be so, delivering something on April 27 that was posted first class over three weeks earlier will not do.

The question of intellectual integrity

In evidence of the fact that a really good book should not go out of print, you can find Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican by Galileo Galilei (first published in 1632) on sale today; indeed in this edition you get the added benefit of a foreword by Albert Einstein. As many will know, the book was Galileo’s attempt to present a balanced view of astronomy and science, in which (through a series of dialogues) he presented the then competing theories of Copernicus and Ptolemy on the universe. While maintaining the appearance of balanced analysis, Galileo demonstrated his support for Copernicus, and in doing so opened himself to attack by the church authorities. He was accused and found guilty of heresy and, despite recanting, spent his remaining life under house arrest. It took the church the best part of 400 years to rehabilitate him.

The Galileo story is these days most often used as an illustration of the corruption of the church and of its interference in science, but while there is an important point in this about the appropriate relationship between theology and science, that is by no means the whole story. We know today that the basic premise of Copernicus – that the earth is in orbit around the sun rather than the other way round – was correct, but the evidence was not as straightforward back then, and along the way Galileo got some scientific facts quite wrong. The point of his analysis and his approach to the issues he was addressing is that he was committed to his search for truth and that he was willing to pursue it in the face of obvious personal and political risks, while still maintaing (or seeking to maintain) friendships with those who might disagree, including Pope Urban VIII.

Galileo was a leading academic of his day, and the controversy about the Dialogue was really about intellectual integrity. It is intellectual integrity that ultimately determines the value of the academy and the ideas it seeks to disseminate. But is this still understood in today’s universities, and are they actually able to host today’s Galileos? In some contemporary arguments this is described as the mission to speak ‘truth to power’, but I wonder whether that misses the point. As many of those who use it probably do not know, the expression comes from an 18th century charge to Quakers.  Today’s references sometimes carry an undertone of self-righteousness that doesn’t necessarily owe much to intellectual integrity. The task of the academy is not to preach, but to analyse and to debate. Academics are not particularly called to disseminate dogma (even unpopular dogma) and  ’speak’ truth, but to seek it.

But in addition, the capacity of the academy to do this is compromised in other ways. It may not need to fear assaults by the church any more (or at least not in these parts), but its vulnerability in material terms exposes it even more. Nor is this particularly about the power and influence of commercial interests: often the biggest threat comes from the state as it cuts resources and aligns institutions with passing political priorities. What universities can safely do and support is often determined by an assessment of the risks they run in alienating those who provide the funds.

On the other hand universities are not set apart from the societies they inhabit, and so the pursuit of intellectual integrity needs to be placed by the academy in the context of the issues and problems faced by the community and the opportunities for improvement that academic inquiry may provide. It can be a difficult balance to get right. But right now there is no real consensus in society as to the importance of intellectual integrity, nor is there always an acceptance that the higher education community is a good steward of it. Restoring that sense of confidence in the value of what the academy does is perhaps the key mission of higher education today. Without this, universities will find it hard to host today’s Dialogue that could mark a turning point for tomorrow’s world.