Lissa thinks:
"What's waiting in space for me? I'm only a planetarist. And even that title is a fake. I don't do geology, oceanography, atmospherics, chemistry, biology, ethology, or xenology. I dabble in them all, and then dare call myself a scientist." (p. 85)
Anderson has stopped rendering inner thoughts in italics. In the Technic History, a "planetarist" is a "planetologist."
"I help get the specialists together, and keep them together, and sometimes keep them alive. That's my work." (ibid.)
The growth of knowledge makes specialists necessary. The need for integration makes generalists necessary. But generalism must be deep, not superficial.
Decades ago, the Head of the Philosophy Department at Lancaster University thought that teams of philosophers needed to specialize in very specific questions but then asked who could possibly bring it all together.
I heard of a guy who inherited a mine and wanted to know just enough Mining Engineering and just enough Business Management to enable him to run the mine as a business so a University put together just enough modules of both subjects to construct a Degree course specifically for him - a kind of specific generalist.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
This is the old problem: a specialist can know so much about a "tree" that he loses sight of the "forest." And the opposite problem applies to the "generalist." Lissa might think she's only a dilettante, but she still fills a real need.
Sean
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