137: Science as a Vocation -- Max Weber (Part 2)

Yeah, we covered a lot of ground in what was a fairly short reading, a lecture.

And we are concluding on the discussion about the role of the teacher and what it means to teach.

and the environment of teaching and whatnot.

I thought I might follow on with that and talk about an area where, I wouldn't want to call it an objection, but it's one where my perspective might be a little bit different, that this is something that struck me as not quite the way that I think about things.

It has to do with the idea of what is a full professor for? I tend to think about two different types of full professor, one of which seems to align with what Weber is considering to be an appropriate end path along like taking this role of the lecturer speaking to a passive audience, a listening audience, imparting information, knowledge, whatnot.

And that is sort of like the Uber specialist.

The full professor is the Uber specialist.

So you have a scientist who is absolutely expert in the field, should be talking in scientific terms, in very rational, very empirical terms about the knowledge that that professor has gained over the source of time.

But then when Weber goes into sort of like saying, no, we don't want the personal perspective or whatnot, that part I struggled with because I also see the other side of, say, what I look to as a full professor, and that is precisely to be a leader of some sort.

And that is to say the bridger of the vast gainings of intellectual knowledge and application to real life.

Not to say that their voice, that they should be perfect in that expression, and I don't think anybody could ever be perfect in that expression, but I don't look to the scientific community to impart one form of knowledge at the expense of the other.

I think of like, you know, you've got the full professor as the specialist, and then you have professors of, I don't want to call it professors of practice, but it's probably pretty close to that, of those who I turn to and say, okay, what do we do To make sense of all of this knowledge, especially the more that progress has happened to the point where we don't recognize and don't understand.

Like even those of us who are in the academic community, some of this scientific knowledge is so specialized.

so advanced that we cannot possibly understand it, who's building that bridge to say, okay, we need to know how to answer the question of, should we be using, fill in the blank, AI or whatever to solve problem Y, Z, W, what have you.

And that's where I might depart from Weber's take, at least on my read.

So just one thing to start, I think that towards the end, he talks something about, you know, what science can offer, which is a little bit about, I think, in my translation, I think it was clarity that he talks about.

And also he talks something about means and consequences, what when something would mean and so on.

So not advice directly, not direct recommendations, but some kind of, let's say, understanding of and specifically analytical understanding, right? So I think that's one important thing that I think that he hints at.

But while I haven't detected a lot of, let's say, dated arguments in terms of even Moon Ho describes the different systems and what it means to be an academic, There is, I think, strong kernels that are still not just relevant, but also, you know, he hints at something that is profound.

But I think there is a boundary condition, which is the kind of space he's talking about, which is the social sciences, which, of course, we're still emerging.

And I don't think Weber had a chair in sociology, even though he's considered one of the founders of the discipline.

But it's in that space.

It was not in engineering.

It was not in medicine.

On and on.