Lew: The days in which most colleges and universities saw their roles as being to help students learn how to think are behind us, having been replaced by the purpose of teaching students what to think. The attitude that still prevailed when I was a student in law school was reflected in the 19th century observation that the study of law was “a sort of search for truth, carried on by teacher and student in common, and which they feverishly undertook, opening up an endless field for philosophic speculation.” Career-preparation, and proselytizing of social/political dogmas, have become the raison d’etre on most campuses.
In the search for “truth,” thoughtful minds discover that their current understanding is unavoidably circumscribed by boundaries created from prior learning. This does not mean that the boundaries of one’s learning are in error; only that they are subject to constant questioning. The history of scientific learning is replete with older ideas being replaced by those that better explain what is observed in nature, a process that Thomas Kuhn has elaborated on in his classic work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Paul Feyerabend, in such works as his Against Method, elaborated on such processes.
The rational questioning of the boundary lines of what we believe to be “true,” combine with the use of humor to accompany us on our visits to these boundary lines. To see beyond the boundary line, into the territory of a differing embodiment of “truth,” can be quite humorous for a free, inquiring mind. The experience of seeing a given word in opposing definitions – what we call “puns” – provides an example of this. But if the system from which you undertake your inquiry is – as the current academic setting mandates – dominated by the propagation of rigid doctrines, any boundary line questioning becomes a threat to the institutional purpose driving that system. To tolerate humor is to lend support to the idea that the boundary lines of one’s understanding are not absolute; that others may view the same set of facts in a different way. Again, this does not mean that one’s own thinking is erroneous, or that the contrary opinions of others are just as valid as our own. The medieval “joker” played the important role of keeping the king aware of the limitations and possible contradictions in his thinking, a function more recently played by George Carlin.
Systems that depend on the rigidity and absoluteness of their policies – which takes in most of the institutional order – cannot tolerate those who “step to the music they hear.” At a time when academia has abandoned its purpose in helping students engage in the questioning of boundaries that can foster individual understanding, the idea that some students might respond to established dogmas with giggling or, worse, outright laughter, must be terrifying.
10:34 am on August 26, 2015
