I think it follows closely enough–my “roughly” covers a lot of simplifying assumptions. The proportion of students who enter may not be the same as the proportion who graduate, and that proportion may not be the same as the proportion who enter research vs. other fields, but unless those proportions are wildly different (and if so, it’d be interesting to consider why that is), they could be considered “roughly” the same. But certainly, any sort of award should be based on what they have accomplished, not on what we can reasonably expect them to accomplish.
Not in the least, but that cuts both ways. Within any generation, there will be those who relatively excel. They may not measure up to Mendel or Newton on the grand scale (though whoever figures out FTL transport will easily be a match for Einstein), but there will be noteworthy things to achieve for a long time to come. That doesn’t, of course, change the history–the foundations of science were largely laid by white men[1], and unless the entire system is overturned[2], that will remain the case.
Yes, that’s it–thanks for the reminder.
Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that Democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor, of course, must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether ‘democratic behaviour’ means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.
. . .
No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.
And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority.
. . .
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence.
Cessationist though I am, I still say Lewis was a prophet.
George Washington Carver is always praised during Black History Month in the US as (as Wikipedia describes him) “the most prominent black scientist of the early 20th century.” He worked in agriculture–addressing soil depletion from cotton farming, and coming up with myriad uses for the peanut (he’s popularly, albeit incorrectly, credited with inventing peanut butter). All good work, to be sure, but not in the same league with the likes of Mendel, Copernicus, et al. ↩︎
In the context of this as the goal of the PC crowd, it would obviously be a bad thing. I can imagine the possibility of something else replacing science as a methodology for understanding the material world, and that being a positive change. I can’t really imagine what that “something else” would be, but I don’t claim the sort of comprehensive knowledge that would be needed to outright deny the possibility. ↩︎