Extending the Discussions

May 4th, 2008 by zen

Despite these problems, which no doubt promise to be contentious, military historians today are doing enough good work, based on exciting and innovative approaches, to re-engage the attention of historians in any number of areas. My final advice to my professional colleagues and friends in the broader discipline? Try something genuinely daring, even countercultural, in terms of today’s academy. Read some military history.

There is something grotesquely wrong when the author of many numerous top-quality works feels he has to grovel before his peers. Unfortunately for him, he has to live and function in a shark-tank of political correctness and ideological hostility. I wish him well.

I wish Citino well too, however it’s a quest that I fear is straight out of Cervantes and this example cited by Lex demonstrates how parlous the state of affairs for military history in academia has become. More effectively than my post had done. Lex’s post has stirred some excellent feedback as well as a possible solution from Smitten Eagle in the comments section.

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Posted in academia, analytic, Blogroll, chicago boyz, coming anarchy, education, Epistemology, feedback, futurism, historians, history, ideas, intellectuals, metacognition, military history, reader response, synthesis, theory | 1 comment

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  1. Younghusband:

    May 5th, 2008 at 12:15 am

    The gap is actually quantitative not qualitative. My bad. I fixed it on CA.Re: discrete facts: there are such a things as historical facts, for example Japan did bomb Pearl Harbour and America did declare independence from the Kingdom of Britain. The chain of causation and motivation are interpretive and dependent on context, ie. not "discrete." Like most scientific analysis, the probability of discreteness is usually only applicable to a narrow aspect of the craft.