Re: Definitions LO1687 (was: Pascal)

JOHN N. WARFIELD (jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu)
Sun, 18 Jun 1995 09:11:04 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO1669 --

Patricia asks whether being anti-intellectual is a phenomenon of
Australian business leaders, by which I assume she is asking if they have
a corner on that market.

Probably American managers largely have these traits, which get stronger
as they advance to higher levels of the larger organizations:

o Won't read anything highly definitive and thorough which is longer than
one page, except if its in Playboy or Playgirl, and even then, we don't
know if they read

o Wouldn't go one foot out of their way to read any academic publication

o Love to read things that other execs tell them they have to read,
and which usually can be read (as books) in at most two hours
(and this is not antithetical to the first point above)

o Often reinvent the wheel, though without recognizing the benefits of
spokes and tires, and then institutionalize their invention in their
organizations

o Believe that J. Willard Gibbs used to coach the Washington Redskins

o May have heard of Michel Foucault and, if so, believe he invented the
pendulum

o Believe spreadsheets as ways of directing actions in the future

o Run several decades behind the state of thought that is relevant to
what they could bhe doing

Anybody wants to argue with this, I have specific cases to mention, e.g.,
John Kemeny's report on the control room at Three-Mile Island, which the
Commission thought originally might have been "twenty years out of date",
only to find that they were wrong--it was "forty years out of date".

On the other hand, the academic community is largely to blame for this
because they have allowed the universities to be taken over by people who
wouldn't know scholarship if it bit them but, who, nevertheless, are able
to bring in money to pay the salaries of the silent academic majority, who
would rather eat than make a big fuss (except when it comes to writing on
listserves)

--
JOHN N. WARFIELD
JWarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu