On Dennitza, as on Aeneas, learning is socially respected:
"'The Shkola - university and research centrum - is nearly as old as the colony. The toughest backwoodsman respects learning as much as he does marksmanship or battle bravery.'" (p. 399)
(On Aeneas, the University of Nova Roma is as old as the colony because Aeneas was colonized for the purpose of studying the inhabitants of the sister planet, Dido.)
I have worked with manual laborers who despised scientific research and academic life. While I think that research is obviously necessary, I also think that there is too big a social divide. If I had become a professional academic, then I would also have become an ivory tower intellectual completely divorced from any practical aspect of life. There has to be a better way of doing things.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Ideally, of course, people in the real world would respect genuine scientific research and scholarship as much as the Aeneans and Dennitzans do.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, I’’m an intellectual — but a writer, and that means long periods of making your living some other way. I’ve picked tobacco and mopped floors in cheap bars.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And forty years ago I would consider the academic scene far more worthy of respect than I do now! The rats of Political Correctness and the Woke Left has taken over huge swaths of academia now.
Ad astra! Sean
Mr Stirling,
And I think that that makes us better intellectuals.
Paul.
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