Читать книгу How to Construct Your Intellectual Pedigree - Elof Axel Carlson - Страница 8

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1What are Intellectual Pedigrees?

Intellectual pedigrees are attempts to trace back the influence of scholars on one another, especially through a process of mentoring. Mentors can be teachers or colleagues at a university. They can be family members or grade schoolteachers. Sometimes they can be authors of books or articles that are read during formative years. In my own academic pedigree, I single out one high school teacher and my PhD dissertation advisor as the most influential in my career. I could identify perhaps a dozen with strong influence but not as imposing as these two — Morris Gabriel Cohen and Hermann Joseph Muller. I applied the same logic to my predecessors.

I begin with the intellectual pedigree of my mentor, Hermann Joseph Muller. Next to myself, he is the scientist about whose life I have the most knowledge. Not only did his mentoring span my graduate years 1953–1958, I had the pleasure of writing his biography — Genes, Radiation, and Society: The Life and Work of H. J. Muller. In this intellectual pedigree, I will work back in time to the earliest known of Muller’s intellectual predecessors. In each instance I have tried to give a brief one paragraph summing up of an intellectual ancestor or descendent and a portrait, if one were available. This approach connects Muller to a network of scholars most of whom I could not have predicted. Unlike a human genetics pedigree with multiple generations producing progeny, the intellectual pedigree differs in important ways. The chain of mentoring is not always linear. Some scientists have more than one mentor. This leads to a branching of the intellectual pedigree. Usually the mentor is at the college level. For most of these scientists that experience was in the process of getting an MD or PhD degree.

In the Middle Ages there were four divisions of the University — all took the seven liberal arts for the BA degree. The liberal arts were first described by Plato in The Republic but while there were Greek and Roman academies for learning, there were no universities.¹ Plato introduced the liberal arts as the knowledge and thinking required for philosopher-kings in his ideal republic. They were tools for interpreting the “the true, the good, and the beautiful” in his era. Instead of a university with classes, the Greek scholars preferred a single scholar who mentored several students (e.g., Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle had their own schools). The liberal arts were not introduced into the European teaching monasteries until the 6th century by Boethius (477–524 CE) who is sometimes described as “the last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics”. The trivium consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Students could then choose one of three graduate (“higher faculty”) specialties — law, medicine, or theology, for a MA, MD, or PhD level of knowledge. In all these specialties, students mastered what was known in these fields. It was not until 1810 that the German PhD became a research dissertation degree in which students did original research and defended their theses (Master’s degree) or dissertations (PhD degree) in front of their faculty.

The university is an invention of European origin.² It was a guild-like arrangement of masters and scholars with two traditions emerging. One had the students hiring the masters and running the university. The more widespread organization was a faculty of masters who ran the university and charged the students fees for entry. Both were affiliated with the Catholic Church. The Medieval Universities differed from the Madrasas that followed the expansion of Islam from the Middle East to Spain. The Madrasas were focused on the Koran and its commentaries. They were not separate entities established by scholars or students. They were affiliated with a mosque and did not initially have formal academic degrees as did the Medieval Christian Universities. Most Islamic scientists were supported by patrons or their rulers. The University of Bologna in Italy, in 1088, was the first university established in Europe (and the students ran it). The University of Paris was established in 1150 (and the faculty ran it). The first public supported university was the University of Naples in 1224. By 1413 there were 21 universities in Europe. The first university in North America was Harvard University (1636).

In the 19th century both the MD and the PhD required a dissertation of book length. The research and dissertation aspects were dropped from the MD in the 20th century. The PhD was not part of the English academic degree. Until the twentieth century the British MA was the terminal degree of higher education. It was the flow of American students to German Universities that motivated Great Britain in 1917 to introduce the PhD so that American loyalties would be for Britain rather than Germany if another war broke out between Germany and Great Britain. The modern university PhD was established by the von Humboldt brothers, Alexander (1769–1859) and Wilhelm (1767–1835).³ There was (and still is) a degree called the DSc (Doctor of Science) used in Britain. It was awarded by a faculty committee to a scholar with a proven record of recognized research. It was rare and like election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt believed scientists should contribute to new knowledge by their experiments and discoveries and the research dissertation was the vehicle for launching new scientists and new knowledge. Another feature of higher education before the 19th century was the religious nature of most universities. They were highly motivated to produce ministers or priests. There were no secular universities in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. Many scientists of those more distant centuries saw their careers as priests interpreting the works of God. Women were effectively absent from higher education until the late 19th century. The first female professor was Laura Bassi (1711–1778) who was born in Bologna and got her degree at the University of Bologna in 1732. She was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics) and helped spread the work of Newton to her students. She did research in chemistry, physics, mathematics, hydraulics, and mechanics.

In the United States, after the Revolutionary War, most colleges and universities were undergraduate institutions primarily training males for the ministry or, as phrased in their mission statements “creating Christian gentlemen.” American scientists took their BA degree and then went to Germany for a PhD. The first American PhD was awarded by Yale in 1861. In the 1870s the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Princeton, Clark, and Johns Hopkins established PhD programs based on the German model of research. Daniel Coit Gilman at Johns Hopkins University played a major role in promoting the German PhD model in American Universities.⁴ The two major suppliers of PhDs in the life sciences were Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University. Harvard University did so by recruiting Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz from Paris to its faculty. Johns Hopkins University staffed its faculty with H. Newell Martin (a student of Thomas Henry Huxley) and William Keith Brooks, a student of Agassiz.

Читать книгу How to Construct Your Intellectual Pedigree - Elof Axel Carlson - Страница 8

1What are Intellectual Pedigrees?

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