Years ago Clive
[update: that link is dead, here’s
a working one] and I spent an evening in the pub with Bob
Savage, after he gave a lecture to the University of Bristol Expeditions
Society on a fossil hunting trip he made to the Sahara in some
early long wheel base LandRovers. We didn’t exactly have a
conversation — it was more that Savage gave a monologue, with
occasional nudging from myself and Clive changing its course but
slightly.
One of the things Bob Savage said that evening stuck with me: he commented that Samuel Johnson expressed a low regard for the usefulness of lectures since the invention of the printing press. Google is helpful as ever [PDF, 260Kb]:
In The Life of Samuel Johnson, Boswell remembers Dr. Johnson remarking that “Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can read, and Books are so numerous, Lectures are unnecessary. If your attention fails, and you miss a part of the Lecture, it is lost. You cannot go back as you can upon a Book.” (The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791)
I am reminded of all this by the following passage from a chapter by Kathleen M. Fisher in XML Topic Maps:
Why do people teach using less-than-optimum methods such as the lecture when significantly more effective, proven methods are available? The answers probably include familiarity, efficiency, and the absence of rewards for putting greater effort into teaching. The human body has evolved with many suboptimal but usable features such as the knee, the lower back, and the prostate gland. Wandersee [personal communication, 2001] suggests that in a similar way, universities have evolved suboptimal but efficient methods of teaching.
I guess the author refers to efficient use of the lecturer’s time here, rather than efficiency of teaching, which it is the point of the paragraph to emphasise is not a feature of the lecture. A bizarre choice of word in the circumstances, perhaps, but let’s not get picky.
The very best lectures are excellent, of course, and do much more than the simple transfer of information. They should perhaps be regarded as entertainment, much like theatre or poetry readings. Some writing, too, is written to be spoken. Mike Abbott recently pointed out that
Up until the XI century almost all reading was with the voice and so with the breath: it was in a distinct sense a carnal activity. This came to be called monastic reading. From then onwards reading became increasingly intellectual, and came to be called scholastic reading. Hugh de St Victoire wrote beautiful things about this transition, combining a lament and a jubilation.
Peirce has to be read, rather like Wittgenstein (perhaps not so surprisingly) monastically.
Which is of course also why carol services and other such ceremonial occasions still use what our evangelical friends might regard as “old fashioned” translations of the bible.
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