who whom?

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Sun, 16 Nov 1997 16:41:18 -0800 (PST)

Diane Asks: "aren't there ways to start thinking about how the
university can be of use to society, instead of how society can be
of use for the university."

D&All-

I have spent a lot of time trying to answer the questions
you pose, Diane. My odd-angle contributions to the current discussion
have been an effort to ask where practice fits into the answer. I
think it plays a giant role, not just "practically" in the sense
of who is helping whom, but in the search for deeper understanding
of humans altogether, which is I suppose what is referred to as theory
a lot of the time.

Our practices are so seldom adequate to our theories that
when they are, we need to be deeply suspicious that we are
being taken in by our theoretical blinders or that we have
simply not waited long enough to find out how we were wrong.

Thanks Martin for educating me more deeply in the classical/
romantic science tradition. Such re-discoveries are encouraging
as signs that my intuitions are not pure solipsism.
mike