{"id":6629,"date":"2016-04-08T06:05:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T06:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6629"},"modified":"2016-04-08T06:05:20","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T06:05:20","slug":"do-ideas-advance-one-funeral-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/04\/08\/do-ideas-advance-one-funeral-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Do ideas advance, one funeral at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Max Planck said that \"<em>science advances one funeral at a time<\/em>\". \u00a0By this he meant that the death of prominent \/ dominant figures in a field freed up others to claim the limelight for their personalities and ideas. \u00a0These days, it also means that getting grants to do interesting stuff might get\u00a0a little bit easier.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you don't have to die to get out of the way; an inactive retirement will be just as effective, as, usually, will be a significant\u00a0promotion \u2013 say to an executive Dean position, or Rector \/ VC. \u00a0In a recent piece in the Economist,\u00a0<em>In death, there is life, <\/em>there was a report of such\u00a0ideas being put to the test. \u00a0You can read about it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/science-and-technology\/21695378-big-name-scientists-may-end-up-stifling-progress-their-fields-death-there\">here<\/a>. \u00a0The Economist reckoned there was something in it, both in the sense that new people and ideas can\u00a0push\u00a0through, and that the abandoned\u00a0co-workers\u00a0of the former guru do not fare quite so well without her.<\/p>\n<p>As I read it, I wondered how well\u00a0this thesis holds for environmental education. \u00a0Now that its founding fathers (and they were all men) are all gone, one way or another, has this contributed to the broadening of ideas that we see around us in 'the field' (and which some persist in seeing as a lowering of standards)? \u00a0 Or would this have happened anyway through an\u00a0organic development of ideas where\u00a0savvy, media-smart, quick on the feet, youngsters exploit the opportunities that have come\u00a0their way to carve out such a myriad of narrowly-defined methodological niches as to completely befuddle those amongst\u00a0us who thought\u00a0<em>post-positivism<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>was a radical step.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst I know that there are some who think that a recent edition of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/toc\/vjee20\/current\">JEE<\/a><\/em>\u00a0is evidence that the methodological genie is now fully out of the bottle, I admire\u00a0these zealots\u00a0for their creativity and imagination,\u00a0whilst thinking that some (at least) are\u00a0borderline certifiable. \u00a0What I really do marvel at, however, for the\u00a0sheer hutzpah, are those who rail against neoliberalism whilst ruthlessly carving out a slot for themselves in the unregulated market place of ideas, exploiting for their own aggrandisement\u00a0the narcissism of minor differences. \u00a0Completely hypocritical, but quite brilliant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Max Planck said that \"science advances one funeral at a time\". \u00a0By this he meant that the death of prominent \/ dominant figures in a field freed up others to claim the limelight for their personalities and ideas. \u00a0These days,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}