Just recently I had an opportunity to witness a Ph.D. defence in comparative literature. The location was a well known university famous for trend-setting in the humanities and sciences alike. Its ascent to ivy-league status was arrested only by the location, where the acute problems of modern society are clearly visible within a half mile of the campus.
The Ph.D. candidate was was well prepared, professionally dressed and only odd looking shoes with heels looking like tree stumps may have betrayed a wilder side of her character.
The defense was a small gathering, four committe members, a handful of fellow students and friends and an older couple, who were most certainly the candidate's parents, cowering in the corner. The first question concerned the basic idea behind the thesis, its structure, origins and the thought process that led from the beginning to the final product. Given the open format of the proceedings I was assuming that the procedure is sort of like professional wrestling - lots of body slams, impressive chokes and eye gouging but in the end nobody gets hurt. Perhaps it is so, but nevertheless it felt like a real cliff-hanger.
The subject of the thesis was a comparison between two national literatures and the basis for it was several specific examples spanning several centuries. The candidate made an opening gambit by attempting to put in question the basic premises of her work, She indicated that the work was perhaps inconclusive, main claims were not supported by research as strongly as she would have liked it, key similarities between both societies may have been superficial, and so on. At this point, the father of the candidate sitting in the corner started viciously chewing on his fingernails providing much unneeded soundtrack. However, the committee took all this in stride. They put down their prepared questions and embarked on a forceful defense of the project, which at least in part must have been based on their input. Afterwards, the clouds parted and what followed was an interesting 90 minute discussion illuminating scientific methods of the field. For a complete outsider like myself, I was very impressed with the methodological issues - careful definitions of the terms, establishing the mechanism for the selection of sources, building support for conclusions based on findings, and ultimately explaining the link between two subject areas. The discussion moved slowly through establishing intellectual foundations for the work and surveying the landscape that came to view. All four committee members represented different countries and different national literatures so there was some tendency to make comparisons that were beyond the scope of this Ph.D. but in the end the work stood on its own and offered several interesting directions for continuation. At the conclusion, and after a short recess, the new Doctor of Philosophy was announced.
My own expertise, acquired late in life, is in evaluating and assessing projects in mathematical sciences and I was quite surprised at the intellectual rigor of this work in literature. There is a stark contrast with the quite fuzzy and vague ways in which modern mathematics is assessed. The projects that I am looking at are forward looking, exciting, beautiful, compelling, or alternatively they are narrow in scope, solid, incremental or unrealistic. When the fundamentals of what is being proposed are very precise and well rooted in the overall mathematical landscape, the uncertain and speculative assessment of the outcomes invites soft and imprecise language which offers hedging against error in judgment. Apparently quite the opposite in literature - the subjectivity in which art is received and the multitude of ways in which literary works can be interpreted asks for a precise methodology and analysis that takes things down to their fundamentals and dissects the literary works into bits and pieces of comparable nature.
It appears as if in terms of presence of precision and analytical thinking both literature and mathematics yield a zero-sum game when the product and its evaluation are considered jointly. If it was indeed the case, rather than a superficial observation, it would support a post-modernist view that in the end truth is a cultural construct and regardless of the field of study the overall level of the scientific discourse is tied up to our cultural baggage rather than the intrinsic demands of the field.
The Ph.D. candidate was was well prepared, professionally dressed and only odd looking shoes with heels looking like tree stumps may have betrayed a wilder side of her character.
The defense was a small gathering, four committe members, a handful of fellow students and friends and an older couple, who were most certainly the candidate's parents, cowering in the corner. The first question concerned the basic idea behind the thesis, its structure, origins and the thought process that led from the beginning to the final product. Given the open format of the proceedings I was assuming that the procedure is sort of like professional wrestling - lots of body slams, impressive chokes and eye gouging but in the end nobody gets hurt. Perhaps it is so, but nevertheless it felt like a real cliff-hanger.
The subject of the thesis was a comparison between two national literatures and the basis for it was several specific examples spanning several centuries. The candidate made an opening gambit by attempting to put in question the basic premises of her work, She indicated that the work was perhaps inconclusive, main claims were not supported by research as strongly as she would have liked it, key similarities between both societies may have been superficial, and so on. At this point, the father of the candidate sitting in the corner started viciously chewing on his fingernails providing much unneeded soundtrack. However, the committee took all this in stride. They put down their prepared questions and embarked on a forceful defense of the project, which at least in part must have been based on their input. Afterwards, the clouds parted and what followed was an interesting 90 minute discussion illuminating scientific methods of the field. For a complete outsider like myself, I was very impressed with the methodological issues - careful definitions of the terms, establishing the mechanism for the selection of sources, building support for conclusions based on findings, and ultimately explaining the link between two subject areas. The discussion moved slowly through establishing intellectual foundations for the work and surveying the landscape that came to view. All four committee members represented different countries and different national literatures so there was some tendency to make comparisons that were beyond the scope of this Ph.D. but in the end the work stood on its own and offered several interesting directions for continuation. At the conclusion, and after a short recess, the new Doctor of Philosophy was announced.
My own expertise, acquired late in life, is in evaluating and assessing projects in mathematical sciences and I was quite surprised at the intellectual rigor of this work in literature. There is a stark contrast with the quite fuzzy and vague ways in which modern mathematics is assessed. The projects that I am looking at are forward looking, exciting, beautiful, compelling, or alternatively they are narrow in scope, solid, incremental or unrealistic. When the fundamentals of what is being proposed are very precise and well rooted in the overall mathematical landscape, the uncertain and speculative assessment of the outcomes invites soft and imprecise language which offers hedging against error in judgment. Apparently quite the opposite in literature - the subjectivity in which art is received and the multitude of ways in which literary works can be interpreted asks for a precise methodology and analysis that takes things down to their fundamentals and dissects the literary works into bits and pieces of comparable nature.
It appears as if in terms of presence of precision and analytical thinking both literature and mathematics yield a zero-sum game when the product and its evaluation are considered jointly. If it was indeed the case, rather than a superficial observation, it would support a post-modernist view that in the end truth is a cultural construct and regardless of the field of study the overall level of the scientific discourse is tied up to our cultural baggage rather than the intrinsic demands of the field.
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