...except they're intelligent enough to hire people to remember where the envelopes are so they don't need to. A. E. Housman, poet and classical scholar, once apologised to his students because he didn't remember any of their names. On the other hand, if he did remember their names, he said, he might have to forget something more important...more important to his work as a classical scholar, he meant, and then shut up before he made things worse.Originally Posted by Croydon Bob
well, if he said that about Adamski, Colin Bennett is sceptical about the claims of NASA and every astronomer. Presumably he wouldn't object to astronauts being out in cattle trucks. In fact, the inspiration for mass-murder was lack of scepticism- people believed absurd and vile nonsense without evidence.
The fortean Colin Bennett calls himself an intellectual, calls people who laugh at him "anti-intellectuals" and calls our rejection of the idea that everything-and-anything-is-real "anti-intellectualism". He famously said at a Fortean Times UnConvention that skepticism was one step away from loading Jews in cattle cars. He thinks that George Adamski really flew to the moon in a flying saucer and that the moon had air and plants growing. If he isn't stupid then I don't know who is. Although, to be fair, I don't think he's actually an intellectual either.
Hi Dalriada!UK Universities are not the workplaces they were even five years ago, let alone ten...
Join in...
"Beneath your rainwashed azure skies"!!!
An intellectual can be daft, yes. I believe bungling is the technical terminology.
Last edited by Harradine; 24th April 2008 at 10:25 PM.
Well, Teilhard de Chardin was an intellectual within the meaning of the Act. So I can't resist the temptation to quote Medawar:
I think that's a yes.* It would have been a great disappointment to me if Vibration did not somewhere make itself felt, for all scientistic mystics either vibrate in person or find themselves resonant with cosmic vibrations; but I am happy to say that on page 266 Teilhard will be found to do so.
o Review of Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, Mind, 70, pp 99 to 105.
* In spite of all the obstacles that Teilhard perhaps wisely puts in our way, it is possible to discern a train of thought in The Phenomenon of Man.
o Review of Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, Mind, 70, pp 99 to 105.
God yes, two of the dopiest people I have ever met were a couple who worked at the same university as lecturers both carried PhDs, both lovely people who were immensly educated, however their common sense and ability to understand human beings (in any sense) was atrocious, seriously, I was astounded how two people could be so educated and yet so spectacularly stupid.
On the other end of the scale, perhaps the wiittest, shrewdest and cleverest man i have ever known is my father, who has never read a book in his life.
I wouldn't directly equate lack of particular skills (social skills, etc) with stupidity. Most people have a long list of things they are unskilled at.
Stupid is, in one sense, doing things well outside your competence when you should know better, especially when outcomes could be nasty.
Personally, I think the term intellectual is probably both vague and loaded in meaning.
Coming from a science/engineering background, I'd personally think of the term more as something to apply to arts type sitting outside cafes in Paris.
In the media, sometimes the word could simply be used as a description when someone has a range of (often arty) skills, or even when it's not clear what someone is good at apart from pontificating, possibly without actually saying anything meaningful.
I certainly have known some very otherworldly academic types (often mathematicians), but I wouldn't think of any of them as stupid.
I really like your arguments tolman and would like to say I agree with you. I am a scientist as well and the other morning driving to work my head was just into this problem to an extent that I drove into the wrong car park. I admit I should have been concentrating on my driving but this aside, this might make me absent minded but does it make me stupid? ... (To all members of the forum, please do not answer that)!
This is the big problem in any discussion about intelligence. The trouble is, although most people have a vague idea of what they mean, intelligence is very rarely defined other than a sort of "You know it when you see it" kind of thing. The general meaning seems to be some kind of combination of maths, logic, spatial awareness, memory, reasoning, mechanical aptitude, common sense, social skills and a whole pile of other things. The trouble is, most of these are pretty much unrelated to one another. It's entirely possible for a brilliant mathematician to have a really bad memory. You can be a brilliant sportsperson or mechanic but be hopelss at maths and not have a drop of common sense.
This makes it pretty much impossible to answer a question like the OP, since you have to ask intelligent at what and stupid at what? There are certainly people who are generally above average in several areas, but anyone who is intelligent in one area will almost certainly be stupid in others.
I have the same problem. As far as I'm concerned, "intellectual" means someone who tries to give the impression of being clever without ever actually doing anything that requires any intelligence or work. As you say, usually arty types reading big books and waffling about philosophy and metaphysics. I think most people have a similar impression. I assume the OP was asking more generally about intelligence and academics.Personally, I think the term intellectual is probably both vague and loaded in meaning.
Coming from a science/engineering background, I'd personally think of the term more as something to apply to arts type sitting outside cafes in Paris.
In the media, sometimes the word could simply be used as a description when someone has a range of (often arty) skills, or even when it's not clear what someone is good at apart from pontificating, possibly without actually saying anything meaningful.
I doubt that one person can keep his or her behaviour constant, and even the most intelligent of beings will occasionally be susceptible to stupidity...I of course would know
The question is "can an intellectual be stupid".
The question, seemingly a good one, is actually a bad one, because it contains a false assumption that prevents it being answered properly. That assumption is that "intellectual" and "intelligent" are equivalent.
They are not. That is why I think all attempts to parlay some or other "definition" of intelligence to answer the question are unhelpful. There is no necessary relationship between being an intellectual, which is a matter of temperament, or cast of mind, and intelligence. Indeed, many people who are intellectuals, that is, habitually seek to understand the world by abstract ratiocination, are not especially well endowed in measurable intelligence.
More rarely, those who possess a high IQ are sometimes refreshingly free of the conceit that to understand something elusive and complex, such as human behaviour, it is sufficient to have grasped some or other typology. An earlier poster mentioned (Peter) Medawar. He is an excellent example of a highly intelligent person who was less susceptible to the vices of intellectualism than many. As a Nobel Prize winner, his cognitive ability is not in doubt. Unlike many "intellectuals", however, he was an able administrator and could write in a clear and engaging style.
The answer to the question, then, is yes. Many people don't trouble to think much at all, but they are no more likely to act stupidly than are intellectuals, whose ratiocination is just as often a flight from reality as it is an embrace of it.
I used to work in Cambridge, and the nearest pub was often full of students at lunchtime - to listen to these no doubt intelligent people was an education in itself; you obviously can't learn common sense, and I wouldn't have trusted any of them to change a lightbulb.
I guess that just illustrates the multidimensionality of people.
It's easy to listen to people in groups talking on some particular topic and form an opinion about them in general even if one isn't starting off with any particular expectations.
However, it's quite possible to see those same people in other circumstances and form quite different opinions.
When it comes to students, there are other particular things to consider.
People in, or barely out of, their teens can be a long way from maturity, especially if they might not have been required to grow up particularly quickly by earlier circumstances.
Also, young people, even if intelligent, can also be simply lacking in knowledge, and can talk rubbish about all kinds of things out of ignorance even if they are generally intelligent, and maybe even exceptionally well-informed about some particular areas of knowledge.
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