Imaginary magnitude

Interesting stuff, as usual, over at Desbladet (one of my favourite blogs at the moment):

“There is an interesting question of whether the industrialisation of academia and the apparent increase in bandwagon-jumping, as evidenced by, say, Chomsky’s influence in linguistics, string theory in theoretical physics, or ‘Derrida’ in LitCrit has had a debilitating effect on intellectual life.”

(Read the whole entry.)

Bandwagonjumping is, indeed, all over the place. But has it increased? It is easy to think of a number of bandwagons in just about any century you care to choose.

While we are on the subject, let me just point you to an entry on another of my favourite blogs, Nasty scholar:

“I think I’m gonna quit academia, after all. In the social sciences, no-one cares about substance anymore. The sheer pain of having to look at the most vapid, well-referenced and poorly thought, playing for the audience, bums on seats-research getting lauded and published is enough to make me fucking puke.”

(Read more.)