Titles and WisdomMany people share the sacred piety towards various titles awarded by numerous national and international committees (PhD, Professor, Academician, prize winner, top-ten hitter etc.). Is there any sense in that? Why should we think that a person with a title would be any better than those with no awards to boast with? First of all, one could notice that awarding a title means nothing but the recognition of the person's activities by an official body; in most cases this is equivalent to rigid traditionality and lack of creativity in the laureate, if not conscious conformism and go-getting. To be awarded a title one has to satisfy the committee's criteria rather than the high criteria of universality and spirituality. Second, all the official and half-official committees are extremely politicized, representing the interests of certain economic and political forces. Thus, winning the Nobel Prize says nothing about the actual value of the person's words and deeds, which is especially evident with the Nobel Prize in literature, or the Nobel Peace Prize. Thus, Russian Nobel Prize winners (Bunin, Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov) have been distinguished due to their sheer anticommunism, rather than according to some aesthetic or other criteria. The same is valid for the Nobel Prize in natural sciences too: there are many scientists whose scientific level is high enough, but only those who conform with the political views of the Committee can expect winning the Nobel Prize. This is so for all the other distinctions as well.
Moreover, even if a person's achievements in certain area well
deserved an award, it does not mean that all the other activities
of that person will be as distinguishable, and that the future
activities of the same kind would be as productive. Thus,
one can never guarantee that a good physicist will be as good
philosopher too - therefore, the philosophic generalizations
by the prominent scientists should be treated with caution.
There have been many brilliant scientists coming to most absurd
conclusions when trying to reason in a field other than their
particular science. Still, I suppose that the numerous absurdities
in scientists' philosophical speculations may have something useful
behind them - at least, they indicate the existence of a problem.
The best way is to judge the people by what they are doing now,
and not by any past achievements or anybody else's opinions.
To communicate with people, and to cooperate with them, one does not
need to know their official titles and popular distinctions.
[Notes & attitudes]
[Online texts]
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